Supporters of President Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s claims to the territory are warning Biden not to reverse it.
Supporters of President Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s claims to the territory are warning Biden not to reverse it.
O n Monday, instead of endorsing President Trump’s 2019 decision to recognize Israel’s claims of sovereignty over the Golan Heights — the disputed territory it seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 — Secretary of State Antony Blinken hedged. He noted, during a CNN interview, that Israel’s control of the territory is “of real importance, to [its] security. Legal questions are something else. . . . And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we would look at.”
Asked about whether Blinken’s comments should be taken as a sign that he’s open to reversing Trump’s recognition of Israel’s claims, a State Department spokesperson told National Review on Thursday that, “The Secretary spoke to this earlier in the week and we have nothing further.” Although Blinken has also pledged to build on the Abraham Accords and view Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his decision to leave the Biden administration’s stance on the Golan Heights ambiguous raises serious questions about the new administration’s commitment to Israel, its strongest regional ally, in the face of the growing threat from Tehran.
Downplaying legal recognition of Israel’s Golan claims further strained an alliance weakened by the new administration’s push to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Minister of Defense Benny Gantz, immediately pushed back against Blinken’s comments. “The Israeli position is clear. In any possible scenario, the Golan Heights will remain Israeli,” Netanyahu’s office told the Times of Israel earlier this week.
Though Israeli officials may be displeased by Blinken’s comments, they can also rest easy in the knowledge that, for the moment, the U.S.’s official position on the Golan claims has not changed: Reversing Trump’s sovereignty-recognition proclamation would require an official act of unrecognition, a move the administration hasn’t yet said it’s considering. “The Golan is, for the purpose of U.S. policy, part of Israel,” said Eugene Kontorovich, a George Mason University law professor who advised the State Department on the 2019 move. “He doesn’t have to call it part of Israel every time he speaks to make that true.”
The key question concerns the likelihood that Biden formally reverses Trump’s decision. Kontorovich calls Blinken’s comments a “trial balloon,” an effort to see what the domestic and global reaction might be if the administration were to use unrecognition of Israel’s Golan claims as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Iran. “Here they’re playing with something, which was not a card that was theirs to play,” Kontorovich said. “It would just be an extremely radical policy to unrecognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan for no productive end.”
Israel’s embassy in Washington declined to comment on the possibility that Blinken’s comments are such a “trial balloon,” but members of Congress warned about the strategic implications of potentially softening U.S. policy on the Golan.
“I hope the Biden administration understands the importance of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights for the security of the Jewish State,” said Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It would be extremely dangerous to give the Golan Heights back to a vicious murderer like Assad.”
Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who introduced a resolution to back Israel’s Golan claims weeks before Trump issued his own proclamation, also noted the growing Iranian threat in Syria as reason not to back down. “President Trump was right to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and it would be a grave mistake to reverse course,” he told National Review.
At least on these points, Blinken seems to agree with McCaul and Gallagher — for now. During the CNN interview, he cited Assad’s continued rule and Iran’s continued presence in Syria as reason for Israel to remain in the Golan. But his ambiguous comments have clearly caused consternation among Israeli officials and key supporters of Israel in the U.S., and to avoid further straining the vital relationship between the two countries, he should clarify the administration’s thinking as soon as possible.