Trump's Golan Recognition Puts Scrutiny on Forgotten Occupation
Trump's Golan Recognition Puts Scrutiny on Forgotten Occupation
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights this week was lauded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it’s also drawing unwanted global attention to Israel’s control over the territory.
Trump’s reversal of decades of U.S. policy, which viewed Israel’s control of the Golan as an “occupation” to be sorted out in broader peace negotiations, prompted the United Nations Security Council to hold a meeting Wednesday in which nearly all members condemned the president’s action.
“Trump has chosen to create a controversy over an issue that wasn’t at all on the international agenda,” Daniel Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, said in an interview. “The status quo, in which Israel controlled the Golan Heights, served Israel and America’s interest.”
Like his decisions to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and cut off funding to a UN agency aiding Palestinians, Trump’s declaration brought rebukes from allies and foes alike at a time when administration officials say they want to go forward with plans to offer a new Middle East peace plan.
Land for peace “has proved successful in ending the conflict between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,’’ U.K. Ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce told the council, noting Britain’s position on the Golan remain unchanged. “We believe it remains the basic principle to resolving peace between Israel, the Palestinians, and other neighbors.’’
While there is little the Security Council can do to reverse Trump’s decision, the move puts the international community in the awkward position of defending Syria’s claims to the land, even though the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, is widely reviled for his conduct in the nation’s eight-year civil war. That put some Western countries in the unusual company of North Korea, whose foreign ministry called the Golan an “inalienable sacred territory of Syria.”
German Ambassador Christoph Heusgen said security concerns should be no excuse for annexing territory, but he called on Iranian-backed militias to stop threatening Israel from Syria. He also noted that Syria’s complaint that the Golan recognition violated international law was “deeply cynical” given the regime’s killing of thousands of civilians and widespread use of chemical weapons.
“The Syrian regime has reacted with brutal violence against its own population,” he said. “It has bombed protected facilities, including hospital schools markets and civilian homes. It has used indiscriminate and illegal weapons to kill and terrorize civilians.”
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War, and extended its law over the area in 1981. Israeli government members say the international community is hypocritical in its criticism of its acquisition of the territory.
“The European Union in Strasbourg and Brussels says Israel cannot claim Golan even though it was captured in a defensive war,” Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to Washington, tweeted. “So Strasbourg must be returned to Germany and Brussels to France? Hypocrites.”
The future of the plateau, a scenic and strategically important area containing critical water sources, had long been considered a subject for negotiation. As the civil war in Syria deepened and its territory fractured, the idea that Israel would return a territory it all but annexed grew increasingly hard to fathom.
In a joint statement, European members of the Security Council said on Tuesday that the decision raised concerns of the “broader consequences of recognizing illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences.”
The timing of Trump’s decision, weeks before a tight Israeli election, suggests he was more focused on trying to help Netanyahu and not on the national security implications this might have for the U.S. or Israel, Shapiro said. But Trump said Israel’s security was at the forefront of his thinking.
“Today, aggressive action by Iran and terrorist groups in southern Syria, including Hezbollah, continue to make the Golan Heights a potential launching ground for attacks against Israel, very violent attacks,” Trump said Monday, standing alongside Netanyahu at the White House.
“We hold the high ground and we shall never give it up,” the prime minister responded.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Wainer in New York at dwainer3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, John Harney
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