Trump’s latest piece of real estate is in Israel on the Golan Heights
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inaugurated a new community in the Golan Heights after none other than U.S. President Donald Trump.
The community will be called Ramat Trump, or, Trump Heights in English—and Israel is hoping the name will help draw more residents to live in the isolated plot of land where 10 residents currently reside.
The announcement Sunday came three months after Trump became the first world leader outside of Israel to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the strategic plateau. Israel captured the area from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it.
“President Trump is a very great friend of the country, a friend who did things for the country there were not done in the past and should have been done in the name of justice and truth,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony. “The Golan will always be an inseparable part of Israel.”
The prime minister also noted that as the Syrian civil war has raged just over the border with the Golan Heights, Israel has been working to prevent an Iranian military buildup there.
“We all know what is going on over the past decade beyond the border here,” he said. “If we were not here, Iranian militias would be here. We will never allow that to happen.”
This isn’t the first time Israel has honored an American president. Kfar Truman was announced in 1949 honoring U.S. president Harry Truman who recognized the fledgling Jewish state in 1948.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman thanked Israel for this “extraordinary gesture” and said he is looking forward to working “to continue to strengthen the unbreakable alliance between the United States and Israel.”
“Anyone who has visited the Golan Heights… immediately realizes it is incredibly important territory to the State of Israel,” he noted. “Few things are more important to the security of Israel than sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”
Trump also recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel two years ago and moved the nation’s embassy there a year ago.
