Secretary-General of Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah urged the Arab countries to withdraw from the the Arab Peace Initiative during the ongoing Arab League Summit in Tunisia, as a response to US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Nasrallah made the televised address from an undisclosed location in Lebanon on Tuesday.

“If there is any remaining honour, conscience and magnanimity in the Arab world and the Arab states, the summit of Tunisia will announce the withdrawal from the Arab Peace Initiative, which was decided at the Beirut Summit in 2002 and return to the point of zero,” said Nasrallah.

“After the Golan [Heights recognition], we have to expect, on any given day and hour, that Trump will emerge on the Arab and Islamic worlds and declare recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank,” he added.

On Monday, March 25, US President Donald Trump signed a declaration recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a territory the Israeli state captured from Syria in 1967. Israel subsequently annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, in a move that was not recognised internationally.

Trump announced his intention via Twitter on March 21, prompting heavy criticism from Syrians and their officials. Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the UN Bashar Jaafari also said that Trump’s recognition was ‘nothing more than a recipe for more wars.’

Credit: Ruptly