The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of 123 votes, while 7 countries opposed it, including Israel and the United States. 41 members abstained.
The Golan Heights is characterized by its strategic importance and rocky nature, and extends over a distance of 60 kilometers in length and 25 kilometers in width. Despite Israel’s annexation of it for more than four decades, this annexation has not received any international recognition.
The resolution states that the Israeli step in 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Golan is considered “null and void” and calls for its cancellation.
The Assembly also called on Israel to “resume negotiations on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks, respect previous obligations, and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan to the June 4, 1967 borders.”
Although General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they have symbolic importance and reflect the direction of global public opinion.
The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, commented on the “X” platform, saying: “The General Assembly proves once again how detached it is from reality… Israel will not return to the 1967 lines, and will never give up the Golan.”
[https://twitter.com/dannydanon]
In a related development, Syrian local sources reported on Wednesday that a patrol of United Nations forces conducted a field tour from the town of Saasaa to the Beit Jann farm in the southwestern Damascus countryside.
Syria TV quoted the sources as saying that this route is considered a new expansion of the UN patrols in the vicinity of the buffer zone south of Syria.
This tour comes a few days after an Israeli military operation in the town of Beit Jann, which resulted in 13 deaths and 25 injuries.
The Ein al-Fawar area in the northern Quneitra countryside is considered the main center for United Nations forces. Previously, the patrols reached about 28 tours per day, but they decreased after the Israeli incursion that followed the fall of the former regime in Damascus, to become between 3 and 4 patrols per day only.
According to the sources, the recent days have witnessed an intensification of patrols, in light of the continuous escalation in the Golan and its surroundings.
The Deputy UN Envoy to Syria, Najat Rochdi, condemned last Friday the Israeli military incursion into Beit Jann, describing it as a “serious and unacceptable violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
