A prominent U.S. Republican lawmaker says Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has bolstered a case for the United States to recognize Israel’s annexation of territory in the Golan Heights as buffer to that conflict.
Congressman Ron DeSantis, an ally of President Donald Trump, chaired a discussion about the prospect of such a U.S. recognition at a of a House national security subcommittee. Speaking to VOA Persian after the hearing, DeSantis said he heard a “very convincing” case from several witnesses who argued that recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights would advance U.S. and Israeli security interests and push back against those of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian and Russian forces supporting the Syrian leader.
Israel captured the western part of the Golan Heights plateau from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it in 1981 in a move not internationally recognized. For years, Syria has demanded the territory’s return, while the United States has considered it to be Israeli-occupied — a position maintained by the Trump administration. In recent years, Israeli leaders have intensified appeals for the United States to take their side in the dispute.
In his interview, DeSantis said he intends to keep building a public case for U.S. recognition of Israel’s annexation. “The (U.S.) president is somebody who, if he thinks it is the right thing to do, is going to do it,” he said. “So I think it is probably better to try to get executive recognition (by Trump) than to try to work legislation through Congress. We can do a ‘Sense of Congress’ (resolution), but it is not binding on the president.”
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A Sense of Congress resolution is a non-binding document approved concurrently by the House and Senate expressing their opinion about a subject of national interest.
The House subcommittee’s senior Democratic member, Congressman Stephen Lynch, expressed skepticism about a U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the disputed territory.
“The idea that military conquest transfers rights to ownership – that whoever wins last war has the legitimate right to territory – especially in the Middle East, is a dangerous proposition,” Lynch told the hearing. “I don’t think following that policy leads to a peaceful region or a safe and secure Israel either.”
“If Israel were to withdraw from the Golan Heights, Iranian forces would replace them,” Doran said. “Recognizing reality (by recognizing Israel’s annexation) will deny oxygen to our enemies and strengthen our allies — precisely what a sound foreign policy should seek to achieve.”
Daniel Kurtzer, a Middle Eastern policy studies professor at Princeton University and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, was the lone contrarian among the witnesses, saying he believes a U.S. recognition of Israel’s Golan Heights annexation would not advance U.S. or Israeli security. He said it would undermine wide international support for Israel’s policies of refusing to take sides in the Syrian civil war while acting militarily against perceived security threats in Syria.
“Changing the subject now to the Golan’s legal status would change the discourse in the region, including among Arab states that are drawing closer to Israel in the face of common threats to their security,” Kurtzer said. “A change in U.S. policy would put the focus on this issue instead of where it belongs – on the murderous actions of the Syrian regime and the support provided to Syria by Iran and Russia.”
In a separate interview with VOA Persian after the hearing, another of the witnesses, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold, said other parties with interests in the region already have begun discussing the status of the Golan Heights, increasing the urgency for the United States and Israel to do the same.
“When wars finish in the Middle East and the diplomats come in, they start moving borders,” said Gold, who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “And I’m seeing early signs that certain individuals are saying now is the time to deal with the Golan. So we need to put up a diplomatic defensive shield there.”
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Pro-Assad forces have captured some of the last rebel bastions in southern Syria in recent days, raising the possibility that he could defeat the seven-year rebellion against his 18-year autocratic rule.