Saniora: Trump's Golan Stance Torpedoes All Peace Initiatives
Former head of al-Mustaqbal bloc ex-PM Fouad Saniora on Friday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's stance on Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, warning that it “torpedoes all peace initiatives.”
Trump said on Thursday it was time for Washington to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic territory it seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.
His abrupt tweet broke with U.N. Security Council resolutions and with more than half a century of U.S. foreign policy treating the Golan as occupied territory whose future would be negotiated in talks with Syria on a comprehensive peace.
“This statement is one of the incumbent U.S. president's most dangerous stances towards the region, because he is trying to legitimize the occupation of an Arab land whose identity has been Arab throughout history before Israel seized it through brute usurpation,” Saniora said in a statement.
“Trump's stance torpedoes all peace initiatives and the traditional U.S. stance that had never recognized Israel's occupation of the Golan,” Saniora added, warning that the U.S. leader's position “opens the door wide across the world to the law of the jungle and opens the door to global chaos in which every country that feels strong and greedy would occupy the land of others,” the ex-PM cautioned.
Saniora accordingly called for “the broadest Arab solidarity in the face of the threats arising from the U.S. president's stance.”
“It will plunge the region into a new inferno, after (Trump) had announced a shameful stance by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital,” the ex-PM added.
In his tweet on Thursday, Trump said the Golan was "of critical strategic and security importance to the state of Israel and regional stability."
"After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights," he said.
The Arab League said Trump's comments were "completely outside international law."
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/258064 |