Golan Heights: Israel’s government on Sunday approved a $317 million plan to double the population of Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights, 40 years after they annexed territory from Syria.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s cabinet voted in favor of the plan, which aims to house 7,300 settlers in the region over a period of five years, during a meeting held in the Mewo Hama community in the Golan.
It calls for 1 billion Israeli shekels to be spent on housing, infrastructure and other projects, with the goal of attracting about 23,000 new Jewish settlers to the region seized during the 1967 Six-Day War.
“Our goal today is to double the population of the Golan Heights,” right-wing Bennett said before the meeting.
He was forced to leave the meeting after his 14-year-old daughter tested positive for coronavirus, putting him in isolation, but a vote on the program went ahead after delays.
About 23,000 Israeli residents live in the Golan Heights, as well as about 23,000 Druze, who remained on the land after Israel seized it.
Israel occupied the region on December 14, 1981, in a move that was not recognized by most of the international community.
Former US President Donald Trump, widely seen as pro-Israel, in 2019 granted US recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.
“The Golan Heights are Israeli. It’s self-evident,” Bennett said.
“The fact that the Trump administration recognized this, and the fact that the (President Joe) Biden administration has made it clear that no change has been made to this policy is also important.”
Shortly after Biden took office in January, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested there were legal questions surrounding Trump’s move, which Syria condemned as a “major violation” of its sovereignty.
But Blinken indicated there was no idea to reverse course, especially with the Syrian civil war continuing.
Bennett claimed that after a decade of conflict in Syria, international calls to restore Syrian control of the Golan were muted.
“Every knowledgeable person in the world understands that it is better to be calm, prosperous and green to the Israeli heights than the alternative,” he said.
Bennett leads an ideologically disparate eight-party coalition that relies on the support of the Left.
Some in his cabinet, notably those from the Dovish Meretz party, have vocally opposed plans to expand settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory also occupied by Israel since 1967.
Roughly 475,000 settlers now live in the West Bank in communities that are widely considered illegal internationally.
Bennett is the former head of a settler lobbying council that opposes the Palestinian state.
But he argued that the unity on the Golan Plan demonstrated that Israel’s control of the region was a matter of “national consensus”.
“The Golan Heights, the need to strengthen, cultivate and live in it is certainly a principle that unites everyone here,” he said.
Israel and Syria, which are still technically at war, are separated by a de facto border on the Golan Heights.
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