Middle East leaders kick back at US Golan Heights decision

President Donald Trump’s call for the United States to recognise Israeli sovereignty over occupied territory in the Golan Heights prompted global anger Friday, with Syria warning it would recover the area "through all available means".

The call broke from decades of US foreign policy and a United Nations resolution, which treated the Golan Heights as occupied territory whose future would be negotiated in talks with Syria on a comprehensive peace.

While Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, thanked the president in a phone call, telling him "you've made history", Damascus, its allies and fellow states in the region criticised the move as provocative.

Syria’s foreign ministry said it showed “the blind bias of the United States” towards Israel but would not change “the fact that the Golan was and will always be a Syrian Arab territory”.

"The Syrian nation is more determined to liberate this precious piece of Syrian national land through all available means," the ministry statement said.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, tweeted he was "shocked by @realDonaldTrump continuing to try to give what is not his to racist Israel."

Turkey, which hosted the last indirect peace talks between Israel and the Syrian government in 2008 but has backed Syrian rebels in the civil war, said the change risked plunging the region into a "new crisis".

"We will never allow the occupation of the Golan Heights to be made legitimate," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Russia warned that the policy U-turn could spark new conflicts.

"Certainly, such appeals can considerably destabilise an already tense situation in the Middle East," Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, said. "It's just a call for now, hopefully it will remain a call."

The Arab League said Mr Trump's comments were "completely outside international law".

Some even accused the US president of interfering with a close upcoming election in Israel in order to help ally Mr Netanyahu.

The White House endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the plateau, which was seized from Syria in 1967, fulfills a request from Mr Netanyahu and came less than three weeks before the country’s April 9 vote.

Mr Trump denied that was his intention, telling Fox News. “I wouldn’t even know about that. I have no idea. I hear he is doing okay,” adding that he had been thinking about it for a long time.

The UN Human Rights Council yesterday criticised Israeli settlement expansion in the Golan Heights.

The UN rights forum adopted an annual resolution on the Syrian Golan, brought by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), with 26 states in favour, 16 against and five abstentions.

European members including Britain voted against it.