Five European Union nations have on Tuesday dismissed the United States President Donald Trump’s move of recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and voiced concerns which could have broad consequences.
United Nations security council nations – Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland – has insisted the EU position had not changed and also, that the Golan Heights remained an Israeli annexed Syrian territory, in line with the international law places in UN resolutions, according to Dawn news reports.
Belgian Ambassador Marc Pesteen de Buytswerve told reporters: “We do not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, including the Golan Heights, and we do not consider them to be part of the territory of the state of Israel.”
Flanked by the other four countries’ envoys, he said, “We raise our strong concerns about broader consequences of recognising illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences.’
Three UNSC resolution called on Israel to withdraw from the Golan, which it has seized in 1967 from Syria during the civil war and annexed in 1981, a move which was never recognized internationally.
Trump has on Monday announced that the country if officially recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, while breaking decades of US policy.
US acting envoy Jonathan Cohen has told a council meeting that the country made this decision to stand beside Iran and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Cohen said, “To allow the Golan Heights to be controlled by the likes of the Syrian and Iranian regimes would turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the Assad regime and malign and destabilizing presence of Iran in the region.”
He added that there “can be no peace agreement that does not satisfactorily address Israel’s security needs in the Golan Heights”.
The council was scheduled to hold discussions over Trump’s move of recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.