Kulanu MK and Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren. Photo: Anne Mandlebaum via Wikimedia Commons.

After President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House next month, the Jewish state should push for formal US recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan Heights, an Israeli official said in remarks published by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

“If it weren’t for Israel’s presence [in the Golan], the Syria war would be spilling over to Jordan,” Kulanu MK and Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren — a former Israeli ambassador to the US — told Bloomberg. “So Israel’s presence in the Golan is indispensable for Mideast stability.”

Furthermore, Oren pointed out, “There are something like 90 ancient synagogues that have been discovered in Israel, 34 of them in the Golan,” he said. “This was always part of the land of Israel. So let us extend our sovereignty in a formal way.”

An unnamed Israeli Foreign Ministry official quoted by Bloomberg said the ministry was looking into the potential consequences of such a move by the US.

The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau that Israel took control of from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in 1981, in a move that was not recognized internationally.

In April — as reported in The Algemeiner  — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his country would never give up the Golan. Past peace talks with Syria — none of which have taken place since the outbreak of the war there five years ago — included proposals for Israeli withdrawals from much of the Golan.

Last year, it was reported that Netanyahu had urged US President Barack Obama to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan — a request that was not answered.