March 25, 2019
The Syrian Golan Heights are on a rocky plateau that overlooks northern Israel and at its closest point is 60 km from Damascus. They are 1,200 square kilometers where two of the four major tributaries or water basins for the Jordan River originate, the Banais and the Yarmouk River, with the Hasbani (in Lebanon) and Dan (in Israel) as the other two sources. The Jordan River waters are of key agricultural significance for Jordan and Israel who share the water flow.
Before the June 1967 War, Syrian artillerary routinely fired down on Israeli villages and settlements below the Heights, a strong motivation for Israel to take the terrain in the June 1967 War. Syria recaptured the Heights briefly in the October 1973 War, with Israel returning to control the Heights in the May 1974 US brokered Syrian-Israeli Disengagement Agreement.
In July 1974, President Richard Nixon promised Syrian President Hafez al-Assad that the Golan Heights would be returned to Syrian sovereignty. But in September 1975, President Gerald Ford told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that the U.S. “would give great weight to Israel remaining on the Golan Heights in a peace treaty with Syria.” Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, and President Donald Trump in March 2019 recognized that annexation, something Syria and other Arab states strongly opposed.
Upon the end of Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024, Israel occupied portions of that country adjacent to the Golan Heights, citing security reasons. In 2025, there are some 25,000 Druze inhabitants on the Israeli Golan Heights where they have strong affiliations with their compatriot Druze relations on the Syrian side of the Heights, prioritizing neither Syrian nor Israeli government harm to their respective communities.
The State of Israel took control of the Golan Heights in 1967 to safeguard its security from external threats. Today, aggressive acts by Iran and terrorist groups, including Hizballah, in southern Syria continue to make the Golan Heights a potential launching ground for attacks on Israel. Any possible future peace agreement in the region must account for Israel’s need to protect itself from Syria and other regional threats. Based on these unique circumstances, it is therefore appropriate to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim that, the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third.
DONALD J. TRUMP
