RIYADH 23 March 2019: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), expressed regret on Friday at United States, President Donald Trump’s call to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights territory captured from Syria in the 1967 war.
“After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognise Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Trump said in his tweet.
”Trump’s statement will not change the reality which both the international community and UN adhere to, which is that the Arab Golan Heights is Syrian land occupied by Israel by military force on the 5th June, 1967,” said Dr. Abdul Latif Al Zayani, the GCC Secretary-General, in a statement issued to Wam.
“The statement by the American President undermines the chances of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, which will not be possible without Israel’s full withdrawal from Arab territories it occupied in 1967, including the Golan Heights, in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions.
He explained that United Nations Security Council Resolution 497, adopted unanimously on 17th December, 1981, declared that the Israeli Golan Heights Law, which effectively annexed the Golan Heights, is “null and void and without international legal effect” and further calls on Israel to rescind its action.
”Israel decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect,” the resolution reads.
Palestine slams US President’s tweets on Golan Heights
RAMALLAH: Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh slammed US President Donald Trump’s tweets calling for legitimizing Israel’s occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.
“It is the Palestinian and Syrian peoples who determine the legal status of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights,” Abu Rudeineh stated in a press release.
Trump wrote on a tweet on Thursday that “After 52 years, it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the state of Israel and regional stability!”
Abu Rudeineh affirmed that any US decisions on recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights constitute a violation of the United Nations’ resolutions, have no value whatsoever and would remain mere ink on paper.
“This Israeli escalation along with the United States’ blind prejudice in favor of Israel will further exacerbate regional escalation and tension,” he stressed.
“Peace, security and stability would not be achieved in the region and the world unless the United Nations’ resolutions and Arab Peace Initiative calling on Israel to withdraw from all the Arab occupied territories in return for peace with Arab and Islamic countries are implemented,” he concluded.
Israel occupied Syria’s Golan Heights, the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 1967, with Israel eventually withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel formally annexed the occupied Golan Heights in 1981, while the United Nations has time and again confirmed the illegality of this occupation.
