In June 1967, Israel was forced to fight a three-front war of self-defense against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It managed to defeat all three of its enemies within six days. In its victory, it took the Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. It is the Golan that has just been in the news, for the American government has at long last recognized the Golan as part of Israel.
The Golan Heights are particularly important for Israel’s security. They loom over Israel on one side and Syria on the other. At its highest point, on Mount Hermon, the Golan is more than 9,000 feet high. The country that controls the Golan has a huge advantage over its enemy below. For nearly twenty years, that country was Syria. From 1948 to 1967, the Syrians had used the Golan for one main purpose: to shell the Israeli farmers far below. Though there are different views in Israel on the disposition of the West Bank, there was no disagreement when Israel formally annexed the Golan in 1981.
Since 1981 no other countries have recognized the legitimacy of Israel’s annexation of the Golan, until just now. The United States, in one of its most important decisions concerning Israel and the Arabs, on March 21 recognized the Golan as an integral part of Israel. The case for that recognition is very strong.
First, the Golan was won by Israel in a war of self-defense against three Arab aggressors. The 1967 war effectively began when Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who declared a blockade to prevent Israeli ships from using the Straits of Tiran, moved tens of thousands of Egyptian troops deep into the Sinai, while demanding, and getting, the removal of U.N. peacekeepers so that his army, as he promised to hysterical Cairene crowds, could march north unhindered and destroy the Jewish state. Meanwhile, Syrian troops and artillery on the heavily-fortified Golan prepared for attack, but Israel attacked first and pushed the Syrians off the Golan and and back into Syria. Given the Golan’s enormous military value, in 1981, Israel formally annexed that plateau that loomed over the Galilee.
It has long been a principle of public international law that when an aggressor state loses in a war, the victor has a right to keep territory won in that war. For if it were not the case, if any aggressor who lost a war could be assured of having territory he lost returned to him, there would be little incentive for a would-be aggressor not to engage in war. The map of the world has been drawn and re-drawn by wars. Think of how much territory the Germans permanently lost after World War II, fully 25% of the territory of prewar Weimar Germany, to Poland (East Prussia) and the Soviet Union (among other territories it won, Russia holds onto Kaliningrad, the former Königsberg, which is totally surrounded by Poland and Lithuania). Or take the example provided by the United States. By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War, the U.S. gained the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. By its victory in the Spanish-American War, the United States won Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as territories.
Another example is Alto Adige, which under Austrian rule had been known as the Sudtirol, which was awarded after World War Ito Italy, one of the victorious Allies, by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. No one then, save for the Austrians themselves, found the Italian takeover of the Alto Adige as objectionable, and now everyone concedes that it is an integral part of Italy.
That was the accepted rule in international law. But things changed when it came to dealing with the consequences of Israel’s spectacular victory in the Six-Day War. Until then, the so-called “international community” had raised no objections to the acquisition of territory by those who were victorious in a war of self-defense. With Israel, things would be different.
After the Six-Day War, there was much debate and wrangling at the U.N. as to how to treat the territories Israel had won. Resolution 242 was the result. The Resolution contains a clause emphasizing “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” This clause has been endlessly trotted out by the Arab side, but it conflicts with two other, even more important parts of Resolution 242. The first is the call for the “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The phrase “from territories” was fought over; the Arabs wanted the main drafter of the document, the British U.N. Ambassador Lord Caradon, to put in the words “all the” or “the,” so that the phrase would now call for “withdrawal from all the territories” or “withdrawal from the territories.” This Lord Caradon most explicitly refused to do; he said that he knew that that would be tantamount to pushing Israel back into the unacceptable 1949 Armistice Lines.
Here are Lord Caradon’s later discussions of the meaning of 242:
The chief drafter of 242 was Britain’s permanent representative to the UN, Lord Caradon (Hugh Mackintosh Foot). In a February 1973 interview with Israel Radio, he noted that “the essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: They have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized.
And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential.
I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border. It is where troops had to stop in 1949, just where they happened to be that night. That is not a permanent boundary.”
On June 12, 1974, Lord Caradon told Beirut’s Daily Star that “it would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967 because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places the soldiers of each side happened to be the day the fighting stopped in 1949.
They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to.
In a 1976 interview published by the Journal of Palestine Studies, Lord Caradon was asked why his resolution mentions withdrawal from “occupied territories” rather than from “the occupied territories.” He responded: “We could have said: well, you go back to the 1967 line. But I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. You couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary. It’s where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1949. It’s got no relation to the needs of the situation.
The demand for an Israeli retreat to “secure and recognized boundaries,” Lord Caradon stressed, was not meaningless verbiage: “We deliberately did not say that the old line [the June 4, 1967, line, i.e., the 1949 armistice line], where the troops happened to be on that particular night many years ago, was an ideal demarcation line.”
Lord Caradon reiterated the essence of the 242 logic on The Mac- Neil/Lehrer Report, on March 30, 1978: “We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ‘67 line; we did not put the ‘the’ in, we did not say ‘all the territories’ deliberately. We all knew that the boundaries of ‘67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers; they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier… We did not say that the ‘67 lines must be forever.
To summarize:
According to the traditional laws of war and peace, Israel has at least as good a claim to the Golan Heights as Russia does to Kaliningrad (which it took from Nazi Germany in World War II), or perhaps even better, because while Kaliningrad could not possibly again become a place from which Germany might attack Russia, with which the city does not even share a border, if the Golan were returned to Syria, it would inevitably again become a place from which the Syrians would resume their shelling. Israel has at least as good a claim to the Golan as the United States did in 1848 to all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, which it won in the Mexican-American War. Israel has at least as good a claim to the Golan, a place from which attacks had repeatedly been launched by the Syrians, as Italy does to the Alto Adige, which it won during the First World War, and from which no Austrian attacks had come.
Lord Caradon stressed that Israel was not obligated by Resolution 242 to return to the pre-1967 armistice lines, and had a right to live in “secure and recognized boundaries.” “Secure” boundaries means “defensible” borders, and military control of the Golan Heights, any fair-minded visitor would conclude, is essential to Israel’s defense.
Buraq says
The 1967 6-day war: David wins against Goliath, reloaded. But Goliath, aided by the fascist-left and a rag-bag of sycophantic hangers-on, manage to persuade UN decision makers that Goliath got a raw deal and should have the points awarded to him, instead of David! Clowns!
gravenimage says
Spot on.
mortimer says
Either you are In favor of Israel or you’re not. If you are in favor of Israel, it must have defensible borders in the unstable and MADCAP behavior of Arab countries that see the coup d’état as the only effective form of election.
CRUSADER says
Alan Dershowitz made that case, in “The Case FOR Israel” book….
and then there is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPch-1CrW_A
Tony Naim says
Only a fool would think of this conflict as one between Israelis and Arabs. The fundamental essence of it is a religious war between Muslims and Jews.Nationalism does not exist in the Middle East. Tribalism and Religion are the underlying foundations of identity.
Based on the Koran, Muslims can never accept non Muslims as equal in any political entity.
Muslims believe they have a mandate to abolish or subjugate Judaism and Christianity, with the use of violence.
Hence their control of the 2 most sacred monuments for Christians and Jews: the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Remains of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
At least , Jews are trying to recover their holiest of sites.
What are Christians doing about Hagia Sophia?
CRUSADER says
Seen this?
Hollywood arguing over Shariah boycotting….
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bill-maher-slams-george-clooney-over-call-for-beverly-hills-hotel-boycott-its-chickensh-tokenism
————–
“Real Time” host Bill Maher and a guest went after George Clooney on Friday night over the actor’s call this week for a boycott of swanky hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei in response to that country’s anti-gay policies under Sharia Law.
In a column published this week on Deadline, Clooney urged the rest of Hollywood to avoid giving business to the sultan’s nine luxury hotels, including the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, because of murderous regime allows gay people to be stoned to death.
“Every single time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery,” Clooney wrote.
But during a “Real Time” panel discussion, Maher said Clooney’s call for a boycott “really bothered” him.
“It’s chickens**t tokenism,” Maher said. “What about Saudi Arabia? If you really want to get back to them, stop driving, don’t use oil.”
Panelist S.E. Cupp, a CNN host, called Clooney “hypocritical,” pointing out that Hollywood does “a ton of business” with the United Arab Emirates, another nation whose laws have been criticized.
“It’s Sharia Law, which is some version of the law in most Muslim-majority countries,” Maher continued. “And if you want to be against that, you know, speak openly and honestly about standing up for liberal principles.”
The HBO star added that liberal activist Clooney is a “really smart guy” who knows about problems in the Middle East, but concluded that the Oscar-winner’s “virtue signaling” ultimately won’t make an impact.
“This idea that the Sultan of Brunei is going over the receipts from the Polo Lounge .. ‘Oh no, we only sold two soups today,’” Maher joked.
It has been almost five years since the infamous celebrity boycott of the Beverly Hills Hotel came and went, after it was revealed that its owner – the Sultan of Brunei – had decided to implement a harsh interpretation of Sharia Law. At the time, a number of prominent Hollywood figures – from Ellen DeGeneres and Jay Leno, to Elton John, Richard Branson and Sharon Osbourne took to Twitter to denounce the hotel and boycotts raged.
However rumblings of discontent have resurfaced this week after Clooney penned an article calling for a renewed boycott given that the harsh penalties are expected to be enforced in the small, oil-rich Brunei on April 3.
The Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air are part of the Dorchester Collection, owned by a wing of the Brunei government referred to as the Brunei Investment Agency. They owned nine high-end hotels worldwide. The Sultan himself has an estimated net worth of $20billion.
Anjuli Pandavar says
Thank you for clarifying this. I’ve long suspected something along these lines (no pun intended). Of course I’m ideologically in favour of every inch being liberated from the tyranny and backwardness of Islam. This is in one sense a separate matter to the principle of aggressive war and the defensive victor’s prerogative over disposal of the aggressor’s lost territory, regardless of the population of such territory.
I say in one sense, because of cause, Muslims do not recognise this principle. So in another sense it is very much connected. When 7th-century Muslims first seized what is now Israel and the Levant in a series of aggressive wars, not only did (and do) they consider themselves obliged to aggressively seize territory, they also hold that such aggressively-seized territory can *never* be relinquished to non-Muslims, no matter what.
What should be an open and shut case, as you so clearly explain, becomes muddled on account of Islamic machinations (just as those same pernicious machinations have been seeking to erode the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into the f*cked-up Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam). It is, similarly, Israel’s absolute and incontestable right to do exactly as it wishes with the territories it won from Egypt and Jordan during the same aggressive war in which Syria lost the Golan. These are most decidedly *not* “occupied territories” since Israel never occupied these territories. They ended up in Israeli hands when the latter, in their own defence, drove out the aggressors. There is *no occupation* here. Tough!
Anjuli Pandavar says
My only disagreement with most who support Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan is that they justify it (in terms of Israel’s security). To justify the annexation is to concede diminished entitlement. This is wrong and possibly exploitable. There is nothing to justify. It is Israeli territory captured from an aggressor in self-defence.
DogOnPorch says
It’s amazing that many folks with little historical background believe Israel started the Six Day War. Anybody from those times knows otherwise. Nasser…and his brand new Soviet military…thought he had an easy mark with Israel in ’67. An easy victory…just get rid of the UN and it’s a sure thing…
Wrong…
Walter Sieruk says
The Golan Heights should be recognized as part of the State of Israel. For all practical reasons, that area of land if not owned and controlled by Israel would than be taken over and control by Hezbollah which is a violent and murderous jihad terror entity .Hezbollah which would only use that land as abase to launch deadly rocket attack into the State of Israel to murder the Israeli citizens .
Furthermore, It should be made known that the Muslim terror organizations Hezbollah,Hamas P.I.J. etc. are all fated to fail in their Islamic agenda of destroying the State of Israel and replacing with Islamic “state.” The reason that they will lose in the end and lose hard is because the members of those jihad terror entities are striving against the Will of God. The members who compose those Islamic terror groups might be too ignorant to know this; nevertheless, the truth is the God had given all land that now composes the State of Israel, including all of the Golan Heights , to the Jewish people. This may be found in the Bible, as seen in, for example, Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. 135:4. In other words the Jews have all this land by Divine Right. Furthermore, the Jewish people should have this land by historic rights as shown in First Kings 4:20,21, 24,25. 8:55, 56.
Still, in all fairness, there is one way for the Muslim members who make up Hezbollah, Hamas and the P.I.J. to convince God to change His Mind about being so much for Israel and then cause Him to turn His back on Israel and then have that nation be no more. That way is for the members of the jihad origination to gather together and then change the laws of astrophysics, including those laws of astrophysics the control the sun, the moon and the stars. For God had declared in His Word, the Bible, in Jeremiah 31:35,36. “Thus saith the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night…The Lord of host is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
I recall a movement in the Knesset several years back where a bloc wanted to concede the Golan back to Syria in exchange for concessions. This a moment of insanity for the Jewish state that hopefully will not be repeated.
CRUSADER says
“Prophecy Update: Flashpoint Golan: The Final Piece of the Middle East?”
(Ezekiel 38 — invasion…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=043L4j133zg
eduardo odraude says
I’d say Israel probably has more right to the Golan than the US had to the territories it got from the US-Mexico war. The latter is disputed of course, but many (including Lincoln and Thoreau) at the time thought the US had been the aggressor.
CRUSADER says
Why bring that up?
Britain and Russia and France all had hands in Mexican and “Canadian” territories in the early 1800s.
One thing led to another, etc, etc….
Manifest Destiny became what it was.
We have a contiguous set of 48 States, the USA could’ve balanced Florida’s appendage with Baja California.
The USA could’ve kept harping on the 49th Parallel but Polk let part of that go, accordingly. Maine could’ve been larger and encompassed Quebec, where the waterways make natural borders. Even with that there was a push among Norte Americanos for upper land regions — remember: The northern boundary of Oregon was the latitude line of 54 degrees, 40 minutes. “Fifty-four forty or fight!” ….
eduardo odraude says
I only brought it up because Hugh Fitzgerald compared the territories the US took from Mexico to Israel taking the Golan. Personally, I have no fixed opinion on the justice or injustice of the US in that 1848 war with Mexico. I’m open to the possibility that what the US did was in the right. But it seems likely that Israel’s annexation of the Golan was more a matter of pure defense, at least to judge by the reaction of Abraham Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau to the US-Mexico war.
gravenimage says
Hugh Fitzgerald: Washington Recognizes the Golan as Part of Israel (Part One)
………………
Good for the President.
dumbledoresarmy says
Yes. Anyone who has even the smallest understanding of history and geography and can read a map can see that Israel *has* to hold the Golan, if it is to have a chance of survival in the midst of a sea of Islam. And the next step is for people to realize that the area that the prophet Ezekiel calls “the mountains of Israel” – historic, Biblical Judea and Samaria, these days by many blind fools called “the west bank”, an Arab Muslim (and also Soviet-inspired, I think) propaganda neologism – are *also* Military High Ground that Israel *must* control, completely, if it is to defend itself effectively in the long term, against Jihad. And that includes Mount Zion, Jerusalem. Before it was liberated from Muslim rule in 1967 – having been seized by Muslim aggressors, with (to their everlasting shame) British assistance, in 1948-49 – Muslim snipers regularly used the Temple Mount and associated high ground as a point from which to take pot-shots at Jews.
gravenimage says
Excellent analysis, DDA.
Yohanan says
When the administration of Pres Reagan and Secretaries Schultz and Weinberger announced they would “punish Israel” for the Golan Heights Law (annexation), this was the response by Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
91. Statement by Prime Minister Begin on U.S. Measures Against Israel, 20 December 1981.
https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/mfadocuments/yearbook5/pages/91%20statement%20by%20prime%20minister%20begin%20on%20us%20measure.aspx