Ted Cruz Calls On US To Recognize Israel’s Claim To Golan Heights
Image by Getty Images
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas again called on the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Israel is stepping up its campaign for international recognition of its claim to the strategic plateau.
A joint statement by the two Republican senators came on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged John Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser, to recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan. Israel captured the heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed them in 1981.
“Responding to the threat posed by Iran and its proxies requires ensuring that Israel can defend its territory and its citizens from attacks,” Cruz and Cotton said Sunday in their statement. “To support Israel’s right to self-defense, Washington should take the long overdue step of affirming Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”
In their statement, the senators noted that in the last Congress, they had introduced a nonbinding resolution calling for recognition of Israel’s claim to the Golan. The resolution languished, and the senators did not say whether they would reintroduce it.
Bolton is in Israel to assuage Israeli concerns that President Donald Trump is no longer invested in getting Iran and its proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, to leave Syria. Trump wants to pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, where Iran and Hezbollah have propped up Assad during Syria’s seven-year civil war, which is winding down. (Read more about Bolton’s visit here.)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
