Netanyahu told the government ministers at Sunday’s meeting that, in a conversation the previous evening with United States Secretary of State John Kerry, he told Kerry that Israel “will not oppose a diplomatic settlement in Syria, on condition that it not come at the expense of the security of the State of Israel”, specifically that Iran, Hezbollah and the Islamic State will be removed from Syrian soil.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed the Golan Heights will forever stay in Israel’s hands, at the country’s first cabinet meeting held in the occupied territory.
In a ceremonial Cabinet meeting in the Golan, Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he doubts Syria will ever return to what it was before the devastating civil war.
Echoing a previous call from the Jewish Home party, a key ultranationalist partner in his governing coalition, Netanyahu urged the global community “to recognise finally that the Golan will remain permanently under Israeli sovereignty”.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move never recognized by the global community.
The Israel’s side of the border, where some 50,000 people live – among them Syrian Druze who do not recognize Israeli sovereignty – is characterized by a flourishing community working in agriculture and tourism, while the Syrian part of the Golan is a war-torn area where minorities are being persecuted, he said.
Though Russia is committed to keeping Syria intact under Assad, it has not publicly broached the future of the Golan.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments come amid a fragile ceasefire in Syria and indirect negotiations in Switzerland between Mr Assad’s regime and the opposition.
Netanyahu added: “The Golan was an integral part of the Land of Israel in ancient times”.
That would mean, Netanyahu said, that “at the end of the day Iranian, Hezbollah and ISIS forces would be expelled from Syrian territory”. Other powers want him gone.
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While formally neutral on the civil war next door, Israel has predicted Syria’s sectarian partition is inevitable.
