World unconvinced by Netanyahu’s claim Golan will remain part of Israel
Washington issued a simple response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statement that the Golan Heights are an integral part of Israel and will remain so forever: “No, they are not.”
A day after the Israeli cabinet held its first-ever meeting Sunday on the Golan Heights and Netanyahu said the world needs to get used to the idea that the region would remain in Israel’s hands forever, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the US position on the Golan Heights is “longstanding and is unchanged. Every administration on both sides of the aisle since 1967 has maintained that those territories are not part of Israel.”
Kirby was asked about the issue by Al Quds‘s Washington correspondent, Said Arikat, who on a regular basis uses the daily State Department press briefing as a platform to ask provocative questions about Israel.