The Golan Heights must stay with Israel

The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that the Biden administration “is walking back the United States’ historic recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights region along Israel’s northern border, a significant blow to the Jewish state and one of the Trump administration’s signature foreign policy decisions.”

The report cites Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comments in February when he would not say whether the State Department would retain the Trump administration’s 2019 recognition of Israel’s sovereign control over the Golan. The area was captured from Syria during the 1967 war.

A State Department official told the Free Beacon, “As long as [Syrian President Bashar Assad] is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself — all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan remains of real importance to Israel’s security.”

Reality: The Golan Heights belongs to and will always belong to Israel. Period. Thankfully, the State Department tweeted on Friday that U.S. policy on the Golan “has not changed.”

But let’s be clear about something else. There should have been no ambiguity from the Biden administration in the first place. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon, the State Department’s new “suggestion that if Assad falls and the Iranians leave Syria, the Golan Heights should be given to Syria misreads history and misreads the eternal security needs of the state of Israel.”

Pompeo is absolutely correct. Without Israel controlling the Golan Heights, Assad, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-backed forces could easily invade Israel or attack the Jewish state from a mountainous vantage. Israel’s control of the Golan allows it to do the same to those enemies. In military terms, it allows for proactive defense and strategic deterrence.

Put another way, the necessity for Israel to keep the Golan Heights has aged like a fine Golan wine.

Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.