Tabnak – US President Donald Trump’s decision on recognizing Tel Aviv’s control over Syria’s Golan has already come back to haunt the Israeli regime. While the Palestinian resistance groups have intensified their attacks against Israel, some leading US democratic figures announced they would skip the annual meeting of the pro-Israeli lobby, AIPAC.
In this vein, Israeli authorities say a long-range rocket launched from the Gaza Strip has struck an area near Tel Aviv in central Israel, wounding seven people in the first such incident since a 2014 war on the Palestinian enclave.
The early morning attack on Mishmeret, an agricultural town north of Tel Aviv, came a day after Israeli warplanes bombed the besieged enclave ahead of the anniversary of Gaza fence protests at the weekend.
It forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut short his trip to Washington immediately after meeting US President Donald Trump later on Monday, his office said.
The Palestinian Information Center reported that two missiles struck the heart of the Israeli-occupied territories early on Monday. The attack reportedly destroyed a building, leaving seven settlers injured.
Meanwhile, several leading Democratic presidential candidates have decided to skip the annual conference of AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States, in a decision that represents a shift in discourse on Israel.
Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who are among the top Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential race, said they would not attend the conference which opened in Washington on Sunday. The Democratic candidates and others expected to run for president, including former Vice President Joe Biden, are not among AIPAC's confirmed speakers.
Progressive advocacy group MoveOn has urged presidential candidates to skip the AIPAC conference. Citing a new internal survey, MoveOn said over 74 percent of its members agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "Any progressive vying to be the Democratic nominee for president should skip the AIPAC conference".
At the same time, hundreds of Druze demonstrators have gathered in the Golan Heights to protest against US President Donald Trump’s widely-condemned assertion that Washington should recognize the Israeli-occupied part of the Syrian heights as Israeli territory.
The protest rallies were held in Majdal Shams Town in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights as well as in Quneitra, on the Syrian-controlled side of the territory, on Saturday, The Times of Israel reported on Sunday.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that it was “time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” upending decades of US policy on the matter.
However, it was unclear whether that assertion entailed any actual measures by the US government to recognize Israeli “sovereignty” over the occupied heights. Some reports said US officials involved in Middle East policy making had not been consulted on the matter by Trump.
In this vein, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said US president has only made the resistance front more resolute against the Israeli regime and its supporters.
Ali Akbar Velayati, who is also secretary general of the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening, made the remarks in a Sunday statement in response to Trump's announcement.
He emphasized that the recognition of the “tyrannical occupation of the Golan Heights … which is aimed at making that regime feel secure, will undoubtedly add to regional problems and make the resistance front more resolute in fighting the Zionist regime and its supporters.”
