"I have promised that we will build a settlement in President Trump's honour. I hereby inform you that we have already chosen a location in the Golans where this new settlement will be built," Netanyahu said at a session of the government.
The move is meant to express Israel's gratitude for Trump, who signed in late March an executive order formally recognising the Golan Heights as an Israeli territory, in circumvention of the UN Security Council resolution that nullified Israel's annexation of the Syrian territory. The move has sparked global criticism.
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The Golan Heights has been mostly under Israel's control since the country seized the area during the 1967 Six-Day War with neighbouring Arab states. While Israel adopted a law that de facto annexed the territory in 1981, the United Nations declared that the move was void and without any legal effect. In 2018, after Israel organized local elections in the area on October 30, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution urging Israel to immediately withdraw its forces from the territory.
