Biden not expected to challenge Israel’s development of Golan Heights for increased Israeli residency

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Biden administration is not expected to dispute Israel’s announcement Sunday that it plans to invest $317.3 million in developing the controversial Golan Heights for increased Israeli residency, the Jewish News Syndicate reports.

The Israeli announcement is controversial as Israel captured the Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, and successive Syrian governments have claimed the region still belongs to them. Israel, however, maintains it must retain the Golan Heights for security reasons and, in 1981, it passed laws extending Israeli control of the area. This extension has caused widespread outcry and condemnation, with critics asserting international law stipulates a country cannot annex land through an offensive or defensive war.

However, in 2019 the US Trump administration officially recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel proper. The question remained as to whether the Biden administration would withdraw this recognition or maintain it. So far, the Biden administration has not made any official statement about it, JNS reports.

Experts have now gone on record saying they do not believe the Biden administration will challenge Israel on its latest announcement concerning the Golan Heights.

One expert, Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and former US State Department, told JNS: “The Biden administration has willfully decided not to challenge overtly the Trump administration’s unilateral political declaration to declare the Golan sovereign Israeli territory. And the administration is saving its powder if in fact, it’s going to use it at all either if there’s unpleasantness between Israel and the United States over Iran or for some more ambitious West Bank enterprise that the administration is going to oppose.”

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