Golan Heights

Golan Heights
Locations	Middle East
Israel's exploitation of wind energy in the occupied Golan Heights is legal under international law because it does not deplete the territory's natural capital. But oil drilling would violate that principle.

Syria's Golan Heights have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was deployed there in June 1974 to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Syria following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Without an Israel-Syria peace agreement in the intervening four decades, UNDOF - whose mandate is renewed by the UN Security Council every six months - remains in the Golan Heights.

On 9 July 2005, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign was established to increase economic and political pressure on Israel to end its occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land and the Golan Heights, provide full and equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel, and respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the first heads of government to go to the United States to meet the new President Donald Trump on 16 February 2017. While the commercially-controlled media focused on the themes of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Iran nuclear deal or a Palestine two-state solution, virtually no mention was made by CNN or other US mainstream media of the most strategic point the two discussed. Netanyahu asked the US President to recognise the Israeli illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, something no US President has done since Israel openly declared it theirs in 1981.

UN General Assembly

On 28 November 2023, the United Nations General Assembly had before it a Resolution submitted by Syria titled “The Syrian Golan” (document A/78/L.10):

Russia and China plus 89 countries voted for Israel to return to its 1967 borders; US, UK, and Israel plus 5 other countries voted against.

1. Declares that Israel has failed so far to comply with Security Council Resolution 497 (1981);

2. Also declares that the Israeli decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan is null and void and has no validity whatsoever, as confirmed by the Security Council in its Resolution 497 (1981), and calls upon Israel to rescind it;

3. Reaffirms its determination that all relevant provisions of the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention of 1907, and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and calls upon the parties thereto to respect and ensure respect for their obligations under those instruments in all circumstances;

4. Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and its de facto annexation constitute a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region;

5. Calls upon Israel to resume the talks on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks and to respect the commitments and undertakings reached during the previous talks;

6. Demands once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967 in implementation of the relevant Security Council Resolutions;

7. Calls upon all the parties concerned, the co-sponsors of the peace process and the entire international community to exert all the necessary efforts to ensure the resumption of the peace process and its success by implementing Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973);

8. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session on the implementation of the present resolution.

By a recorded vote of 91 (including Russia and China) in favour to 8 against (Australia, Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United Kingdom, United States), with 62 abstentions, the UN General Assembly demanded that Israel withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan and resume talks on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks, as well as to respect commitments reached during previous talks.

By further terms of the text, UNGA declared that Israel has failed so far to comply with Security Council Resolution 497 (1981) and that its 1981 decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan is null and void with no validity. It demanded once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967. It called on all concerned parties to resume the peace process and ensure its success by implementing relevant Security Council Resolutions.

Oil resources

Backers of Genie Energy's Afek: Rupert Murdoch, Jacob Rothschild and Dick Cheney

In 2010, Israel awarded oil exploration rights in the Golan Heights to Genie Energy, a US company founded by Howard Jonas, an American Jewish millionaire, whose 'strategic advisory board' includes a bunch of senior spooks from the cabal - Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, Lord Jacob Rothschild, Larry Summers, a senior official under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and former CIA director James Woolsey. The chairman of Afek, Genie's Israeli subsidiary, is Effi Eitam, a far-right former general and cabinet minister who lives in an illegal settlement in the Golan.

In October 2015, a huge oil discovery in the Golan Heights was reported in the Israeli media.

Carpe Diem

On Friday 13 November 2015, the day of the mass murder in Paris, Israel announced it was seeking to annex the Golan Heights.

Upping the Ante

Benjamin Netanyahu in the Golan Heights

On Sunday 17 April 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights for the first time, declaring that Israel would not return the territory, even to a post-civil war Syria.

As another round of peace talks aimed at resolving the five-year Syrian conflict was looking encouraging in Geneva, Netanyahu took the opportunity to apply pressure on the United Nations:

“The time has come for the international community to recognise reality. Whatever is beyond the border, the boundary itself will not change.”

Germany was the first country to respond. Martin Schaefer, spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, said:

"It's a basic principle of international law and the UN charter that no state can claim the right to annex another state's territory just like that."

US State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed that the Obama administration does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel:

"The US position on the issue is unchanged. This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow this."

In March 2019, US President Donald Trump said it is time the US recognises Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967.

In a tweet, Mr Trump declared that the plateau was of "critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and regional stability".

Richard Haass, a former senior US State Department official who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, said he "strongly disagreed" with Mr Trump's decision.

In a tweet, Mr Haass said the move violated a UN Security Council resolution, "which rules out acquiring territory by war".

Mr Trump's declaration comes as Benjamin Netanyahu faces a closely fought general election on 9 April 2019, as well as a series of possible corruption charges.

In 2017, President Trump announced that the US recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, triggering angry reaction from the Palestinians.

Last year, the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Nuclear mines

Seymour Hersh referred to the deployment of nuclear land mines along the Golan Heights by Israel in the early 1980s. Others doubt that mining of the Golan Heights has taken place and/or are doubtful about the sources of Hersh's reporting.

“But what we also have discovered was that Israel not only has nuclear weapons, but sophisticated tactical nuclear weapons just like we do. Remember the American Army used to have nuclear land mines, for example, all over Germany. Well, the Israelis, we've discovered, have nuclear land mines seated on the Golan Heights and at one point Ariel Sharon, who is, of course, famous for the invasion of Lebanon and whatnot, went to [Menachem] Begin and said, "Look, you're busy," and had a terrible relationship at the time with the chief of Mossad. He wanted to take over sole control of the nuclear button, and Begin, fortunately, said no.”
Leslie Cockburn (July 30, 1991) 

 

Events

Event	Description
2006 Lebanon War
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	Hamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11", while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7	Hamas attacks Israeli settlements in Southern Israel, mass raping and abducting, which get called an Israeli "9-11" by CCM. The NYT and Al Jazeera claimed the Israeli government knew of the impending attack, ignored warnings, shot some of their own civilians, made up several stories and used the resulting increased death toll to go on a revenge killing spree in the 2023 Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Yom Kippur War	A Bilderberg approved war in the Middle East to provide probable cause to increased the oil price, allowing US oil companies to cash in big time.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Ruth Davidson slammed over high-level Tory visit to illegal Israeli settlement	Article	13 November 2016	Martin Williams	Al-Marsad director Dr Nizar Ayoub told Ruth Davidson: "The only part of Syria that Israel borders is the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The fighting in Syria is not taking place metres away from Israel, it is taking place metres away from the occupied Syrian Golan."
Document:The New Silk Road Will Go Through Syria	Article	13 July 2017	Pepe Escobar	Beijing is working non-stop for the Iran-Iraq-Syria triumvirate to become a key hub in the New Silk Road (OBOR). Any bets against a future, booming Shanghai-Latakia container route?
Document:The Relative Value of Life and Death	blog post	29 July 2024	Craig Murray	Israel has been bombarding Syria relentlessly from long before October 2023 and has continued unabated – and unreported by western media. Israel’s attacks on civilian areas of Damascus this last few weeks have been devastating. It is pretty obvious that any loose missile that dropped on Majdal Shams is likely to have come from Israel, which is slinging huge quantities of munitions into Syria and Lebanon with wild abandon.
Document:Trump Set to Recognise Israel’s Claim to Occupied Golan Heights and its Sizeable Oil Reserves	Article	26 May 2018	Whitney Webb	Given that Genie Energy’s contract to conduct exploratory drilling in the Golan Heights expires this year, its investors are in urgent need of a way to extract and sell the region’s oil – and a US decision on Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights could be just the answer to the company’s problems.
Document:Verdict First, Evidence Later: Khan Sheikhoun Gas Attack	article	11 April 2017	James O'Neill	Three days before the tragedy at Khan Sheikhoun a convoy of TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) missiles, gas masks for up to 2000 persons and chemical warfare suits from Saudi Arabian stockpiles left Hatay in Turkey for Idlib in Syria where al Nusra are in control.
Document:Who has Committed the Recent Gas Attack in Syria	Article	6 April 2017	Jean Périer	The plan to incriminate the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons was finalised at a meeting in an Israeli army camp deep inside the occupied territory of the Golan Heights attended by leaders of a number of terrorist groups sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Turkey, Israel, France, UK and the United States.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.