Golan residents unhappy, yet unsurprised by US decision
Golan Heights residents were dismayed but not altogether shocked by the US president's sudden decision to recognize Israel's annexation of their homeland.
When the Israeli prime minister met with the US president earlier this week, each had a gift for the other. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister fighting for his political life amid charges of corruption and bribery, gave Donald Trump wine made by illegal Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights. Many people around the world and even in Israel itself boycott Golan wine because it is produced on stolen lands.
In return, Trump had prepared a much nicer gift. The US president, reportedly without the knowledge of some of his own senior staff, decided to unilaterally recognize Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights — a decision that the entire world community has rejected and issued United Nations Security Council resolutions to that effect.
The US decision came one week after the US State Department reversed five decades of US policy by changing the term it uses to refer to the status of the Golan Heights from “occupied territory” to “Israeli-controlled territory.”
Demonstrations spread across Syria March 26 opposing the US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in a rare show of unity in the war-torn country.
