‘Golan Heights is part of northern Israel,’ White House says after Hezbollah attack

US officials clarified that the Golan Heights is part of northern Israel in statements released after the Hezbollah attack Saturday that killed 12 children in the Druze village of Majdal Shams, located in that region.

National Security Council spokeswoman Adriane Watson and Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security adviser both spoke of the “horrific attack” that took place in “northern Israel” when they issued statements on Monday.

When asked if the Biden administration considered it part of Israel, US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby replied, “Yes.”

Israel captured that strategic territory from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, but that move was never recognized internationally.

The United Nations annually calls on Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria, despite the civil war that has raged in that country for more than a decade.

Former US president Donald Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019; the Biden administration upheld that policy but made it seem circumstantial.

'Policy has not changed'

US “policy on the Golan Heights has not changed under this administration,” Kirby said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “addressed this a couple of years ago, when he said that, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is important to Israeli security,” Kirby explained. “We continue to recognize the circumstances that were in the 2019 proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

“That proclamation stated, and I quote from it, that aggressive acts by Iran and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah in southern Syria, continue to make the Golan Heights a potential launching ground for attacks on Israel. So again, no change to the policy.”