Israel Will Never Return Golan Heights to Syria, Says Netanyahu Israeli leader says ‘time has come for international community to face reality’ over disputed region by Rory Jones

Posted By on April 18th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-will-never-return-golan-heights-to-syria-says-netanyahu-1460900220

TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights for the first time on Sunday, declaring that Israel would never return the territory to Syria.

As another round of peace talks aimed at resolving the five-year Syrian conflict continued in Geneva, Mr. Netanyahu said it was time the international community recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

“The time has come for the international community to recognize reality,” he said at the meeting’s opening. “Whatever is beyond the border, the boundary itself will not change.”

The international community doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and as in the Palestinian territories, considers settlement-building there illegal.

Mr. Netanyahu said he had spoken by phone Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to offer Israeli support for the United Nations-mediated talks as long as their outcome doesn’t threaten Israel.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv declined to immediately comment on Mr. Netanyahu’s comments.

Western officials recognize the Golan Heights’s elevated position as strategically advantageous to Israel’s security as it overlooks Israeli towns and villages. Israel captured the roughly 500 square-mile territory from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and formally annexed the land in 1981. It also captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the war, ceding control in 2005, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan.

Mr. Netanyahu, who used the special cabinet meeting to mark the first anniversary of his re-election, said more than 50,000 people now live in the Golan Heights, including thousands of members of the Syrian Druse minority who don’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the land. CONTINUE AT SITE

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