WASHINGTON - The unilateral decision by the United States to recognize Golan Heights as Israeli territory violates both international law and UN Security Council resolutions, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Vladimir Safronkov said at an emergency SC meeting.
"Despite the opinions and the warnings from the international and regional levels, the US formally pronounced Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan," Safronkov said on Wednesday. "We confirm that such steps not only violate the norms of international law, furthermore they violate Security Council resolutions."
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order formally recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
"The UN force historically has been an effective mechanism to decrease tension, to prevent incidents and escalation, and also to settle different claims between Israel and Syria," Safronkov said on Wednesday. "This mechanism in the future should be able to create potential for building trust between the parties too. It is unacceptable seeing this positive trend and unilateral steps to undermine that, this not only exacerbates the situation in Syria and complicates the establishment of political process but it also creates serious obstacles to normalizing the relations between Israel and the Arab States."
The US move, which is widely regarded as beneficial not only for Israel, but personally for Netanyahu, who is running in the April 9 parliamentary elections, has already been condemned by Russia, Syria, Iran, Turkey and other countries. US major allies, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, have similarly refused to back the US U-turn on the Golan, which runs against the UN Security Council resolutions.
The Golan Heights has been mostly under Israel's control since the country seized the area during the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israel adopted a law that de facto annexed the territory in 1981, the United Nations declared that the move was void, without any legal effects. In 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution urging Israel to immediately withdraw its forces from the area after the country organized local elections in the area on October 30.