The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has rejected a recent statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Tel Aviv will never relinquish the occupied Golan Heights.
"Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," said China's UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi, this months president of the 15-nation Security Council, after a closed-door meeting in New York on Tuesday.
During the Israeli regime's first cabinet meeting in the occupied territory earlier this month, Netanyahu claimed that "the Golan Heights will remain in the hands of Israel forever," and demanded that the international community recognize Syrias Golan as Israeli territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks with ministers prior to a weekly cabinet meeting in the occupied Golan Heights, April 17, 2016. (Reuters)Whatever happens on the other side of the border, the border itself will not move. Secondly, after 50 years it is time that the international community realized that the Golan will remain under Israeli sovereignty.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
The regime has built tens of illegal settlements in the area ever since and has used the region to carry out a number of military operations against the Syrian government.
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An Israeli soldier walks next to a 155mm mobile artillery battery stationed near the border with Lebanon in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on January 29, 2015. (AFP)[/caption]Reiterating the councils 1981 decision, Liu said the members recall the resolution 497 [which] decided that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect.
He added that the council supports a peaceful solution to the Golan issue.
In 1974, the UN established a peacekeeping mission in Golan named the UNDOF, which is tasked with monitoring the line that separates Israel and Syrian forces.
By Press TV
