The Middle East is vast, and within it Israel is no more than a speck, a shard, a sliver clinging to the easternmost shore of the Mediterranean Sea. At present, it is the only nation in the region that is free and democratic, guaranteeing the rights of all its citizens, including its significant Arab and Muslim minorities. Saying this will no doubt make some people angry, but it’s a fact.
Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors attempted to prevent the birth—or, more precisely, rebirth—of the Jewish state. Wars aimed at Israel’s annihilation followed. Israelis defended themselves, acquiring territories in the process.
At the end of the War of Independence, an armistice line—not a lawful international border—separated Israel from Syria. Soon after, Syrian soldiers in the Golan Heights began shelling Israeli farms and villages in the Galilee below.
In 1967, Syria attacked Israel from the Golan Heights. At the end of what became known as the Six Day War, Israel was in possession of two-thirds of the strategic plateau, 500 square miles, an area roughly the size of Phoenix, Arizona.
Israelis were open to a “land for peace” deal with Syria, but the Arab League promptly issued its “Three No’s”: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”
The next attempt to exterminate Israel was the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Syrian tanks overran much of the Golan before being pushed back in the fierce battles that followed.
Eight years later, with Syria uninterested in making peace, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump decided it was time for the United States to officially recognize the reality “that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.”
As expected, Israel’s Western critics and enemies (groups it’s often difficult to differentiate between) expressed outrage. Arab countries denounced the move, too, though with minimal vehemence.
That’s not surprising: Syria, under the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, has become a dependency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a jihadi, neo-imperialist, Persian/Shi’ite regime that threatens the region’s Arab/Sunni states. It is not in the interest of these states to see their enemy strengthened, or the enemy of their enemy weakened.
It should be noted that no one who identifies as Palestinian lives in the Golan. Syrian Arabs fled. The Druze who stayed on, currently numbering about 20,000, receive the same social benefits as Israeli citizens and are eligible for full Israeli citizenship.
It has often been claimed that Israel’s annexation of the Golan violates international law, in particular, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, passed in November 1967. But 242 is not a Chapter 7 resolution—the only type of resolution that can establish international law. Other resolutions are statements of (often purposely ambiguous) diplomatic consensus or recommendations. It is an error—or a fraud—to regard them as globalist legislation.
What’s more, the phrase you’ll hear quoted, the resolution’s assertion of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” was not meant to license aggressors to wage wars with impunity.
Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has observed: “No country in history has ever given back to a sworn enemy, militarily essential territory that has been captured in a defensive war.”
In testimony before Congress last July, legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich noted that the U.N. Charter “expressly reaffirms the legality of a defensive war. Since defensive war is not illegal, it follows that the defender’s territorial gains from such a war would not be illegal.”
That should be obvious given the many territorial gains and losses in Europe following World War II—the conflict which both preceded and inspired the drafting of the U.N. Charter.
Ignored by Israel’s critics is that Resolution 242 also emphasizes that “every State in the area” has the “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
Tehran is egregiously violating that right by attempting to establish military bases in Syria for the purpose of opening a third front against Israel, in addition to the fronts it supports in Lebanon and Gaza. Why do Israel’s detractors say nothing about that? I suspect you know the answer.
By recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan, Trump—with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) leading a bipartisan effort to pass supporting congressional resolutions—has not just demonstrated fairness and bolstered the security of America’s most reliable ally, he’s also given a boost to any future Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
If that seems confusing, consider that so long as the hard men of Hamas and Fatah are encouraged to believe that destroying Israel remains a realistic goal, they will not agree to end the conflict—no matter how beneficial that might be for the average Palestinian.
Only if they are convinced that there is more to lose than to gain by prolonging their war against Israel, and that driving the Jews into the sea is an impossible dream, might they resign themselves to what they regard as the shameful alternative: serious negotiations leading to compromises (on both sides) culminating in a situation rare in the long and bloody history of the Middle East: independent nations peacefully coexisting.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for “The Washington Times.”