by Jessica BUXBAUM

On December 9, Israeli police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at hundreds of Syrians peacefully demonstrating against the development of a wind farm in the occupied Golan Heights.

Ten protesters were injured and eight arrested. According to Al-Marsad, the sole human rights organization in the occupied Golan, the Golan Association for the Development of Arab Villages’ medical clinic received 12 cases of protesters with rubber bullet wounds—some on the upper body and face. Dozens of demonstrators suffered from gas inhalation. According to the police, officers responded with “non-lethal weapons” and four officers were injured from stones being thrown.

The violent confrontation capped off a week of heavy police presence in the Golan Heights. Officers were there to escort employees from Israeli company Energix Renewable Energies as they took soil samples using drilling machines for their wind turbine project being built on Syrian land.

Police road closures prevented 1,000 Syrian farmers from accessing their land. Demonstrators say the excavation work damages agriculture.

Syrian Druze say the wind farm will disrupt their way of life

The December 9 protest was part of a general strike in the Syrian Druze communities against Energix and the police. But the Syrian struggle against Energix stems as far back as 2018 when Energix was in the final stages of getting its wind turbine project approved.

Now, the wind farm is underway after being approved by Israel’s National Committee of Infrastructure (NIC) and all government ministries despite strong opposition to it from the local residents.

“[This project] will have bad effects for our land, our environment and for us as farmers and human beings,” Emil Masood, an activist and cherry farmer who is organizing against the wind farm, said.

Dubbed the ARAN Wind Project, the plan will install 23 wind turbines on nearly a quarter of Syrian agricultural land. The original proposal requested 52 wind turbines, but the project was scaled back as it went through the government stages.

Energix denies the project will harm the local economy, environment, and health, arguing, “it will lead to a significant improvement in the quality of life of the residents” and “occupy less than 2 percent of the margins of the agricultural space of the Druze community.” According to the approved project map, the wind farm will span a little more than 3,500 dunams (nearly 870 acres).

Energix boasts the project will create hundreds of jobs while meeting Israel’s renewable energy goals. Israel entered the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 and agreed to have 10 percent of its energy produced through renewable sources by 2020 and 17 percent by 2030.

But according to expert testimonies filed as part of a joint objection to the wind farm, the project will significantly harm Syrians’ health, housing, and livelihoods.

Dr. Hagit Ulanovsky, who provided an expert opinion for the community appeal, explained that because of the region’s mountainous topography, residents are going to feel the infrasound from the wind turbines more intensely in their bodies. And these noise disturbances will ultimately prevent Syrian farmers from cultivating their land.

“The noise is going to be impossible. Nobody will be able to stand 200 to 300 meters [about 650 to 980 feet] from each turbine, which is half of the area that’s covered,” Ulanovsky said. “And during the construction phase, thousands of trees will be taken out and basically be dead forever.”

“At least 500 to maybe 5,000 years of Druze people living in the same place and growing the same trees for several generations is going to stop,” Ulanovsky added.

A forgotten occupation

Israel occupied the Syrian Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were forcibly displaced and now roughly 22,000 Syrians remain in the four villages of Majdal Shams, Masada, Buqata, and Ein Qiniyye. In 1981, Israel annexed the Syrian Golan and tried to impose Israeli citizenship on the Jawlani, the Syrian residents of the occupied Golan Heights. Many Jawlani continue to this day to reject Israeli citizenship, with only 20% of the population having acquired it.

Dr. Muna Dajani from the London School of Economics, who also provided expert testimony, explained that because of this refusal to take Israeli citizenship, the Jawlani’s travel documents state they don’t have a nationality. Instead, the Israeli government has labeled them as “undefined.”

“The Jawlani have started relating more and more to the land as their source of identity and their source of belonging to a community because of that exclusion from being Syrian, and that meant they started valuing the land beyond its physical economic value,” Dajani said.

“Constructing these wind turbines in the middle of the land not only undermines the economic viability of their agriculture but also has a detrimental psychological effect on their community well-being, their sense of purpose and sense of belonging,” Dajani continued. “People feel without land they have nowhere, they don’t have an identity left.”

Expert opinions also emphasized the wind farm will restrict the expansion of at least three surrounding Syrian villages, thereby exacerbating the housing crisis in these communities. The collective appeal was submitted by Al-Marsad to the NIC in June 2019 on behalf of Syrian agricultural cooperatives, civil society groups, and thousands of civilians. By August of that same year, the NIC rejected all objections and approved the project in September.

Energix plans to connect the wind farm to the electricity grid by the end of 2022. Nizar Ayoub, Al-Marsad’s director, told MintPress News that the organization is collaborating with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Planners for Planning Rights (Bimkom) to utilize every legal tool to stop the wind turbine project. Al-Marsad alleges the project violates international humanitarian law whereby an occupying power is prohibited from exploiting the natural resources of the occupied territory or using their land for economic benefit.

However, the organization is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against them from Energix. In 2019, the energy company sued Al-Marsad, claiming the human rights center defamed them and violated Israel’s Anti-Boycott Law. In addition to the lawsuit against Al-Marsad, Energix also filed five cases against activists.

“There’s no basis in their arguments,” Ayoub said. “They’re just using this strategy to silence the local communities and Al-Marsad.”

The resistance continues

Following this month’s confrontation between Israel police and activists, the local committee for planning and construction – Ma’ale Hermon – issued a restraining order to Energix to cease all work. The order was issued after the local village councils filed an appeal to the committee. Energix is aware of the order but said it will not impact their wind turbine project and has no legal grounds.

For activist and farmer Masood, any attempts by local authorities to stop the project are merely a sham.

The Syrian activists’ next steps rely on how Energix proceeds, Masood said, “if they want to force this project on us, we will react.” Activists are currently working with an engineer to measure the amount of land damage caused and submit it to their lawyer in Tel Aviv for court procedures.

“But in the field, whenever the company will come back,” Masood said. “We will stand and confront it.”

mintpressnews.com

Forty-seven years ago, Egypt and Syria launched a massive surprise attack on Israeli forces dug into fortifications along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights. The ‘limited’ Arab objective was to recapture both strategic areas that had been seized from the two Arab states in Israel’s victorious 1967 War.

Re-armed with modern – but by no means top drawer – Soviet weapons, Egypt and Syria sought to drive the Israelis back, then wait for the great powers to impose a truce. It was a badly flawed strategy, which assured the heavily armed Israelis would control the military initiative with their superiority in air power and armor.

At first, the Arab surprise attack caught Israel flat-footed. Israeli reserve armored forces were still in storage when Egyptian and Syrian armor and infantry stormed across the 1967 cease-fire lines.

Warnings of the impending assault from the most important Israeli spy, Ashraf Marwan – amazingly the son-in law of the late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser – were ignored or shrugged off in Israel which was still filled with hubris over its lopsided, US-assisted victory in the 1967 War.

This was the first big mystery of the 1973 War. Was Marwan really a Mossad spy or a double agent, as Egypt later claimed, disinforming Israel on the time of the Arab offensive? Marwan later fell to his death – or was pushed – from a London apartment.

Syria’s armor drove into the Golan Heights from their starting positions on the plains east of Golan and the Mount Hermon massif.

The opening Arab assault was a remarkable success. I walked much of the Suez Canal soon after the war and was awed that Egypt’s military engineers had managed to get so many tanks and men across the wide canal under enemy fire.

Equally amazing was Egyptian infantry using highly effective new Soviet Sagger anti-tank missiles and air defense units employing SAM-6 anti-aircraft missiles to blunt Israeli counter attacks. Hundreds of Israeli US-supplied M40 and M60 tanks and 20% of Israel’s formidable air force were destroyed.

Most of Israel’s 15 Bar Lev forts built to defend the Suez Canal were stormed. As a connoisseur of modern fortification, I was fascinated to explore the fallen Israeli forts. Syria inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli armor defending the Golan Heights and on its forts.

The second big mystery of the war concerns the savage fight for Golan. Syrian armor and mechanized divisions had managed to claw their way to the top of the Golan Heights, from where they looked down on Galilee and most of northern Israel. We don’t know whether Syria intended to drive into Galilee, formerly a heavily Arab area, or try to defend the Golan ridgeline. But orders went out from Syrian HQ to halt the Syrian offensive when the downhill road to Galilee and Jordan River bridges were wide open. Why did the Syrians halt their advance when victory was in their grasp?

The answer remains a mystery. But the best assumption is that Soviet spy satellites saw Israel move 13 Jericho missiles out of caves at two airbases and affix their 20-kiloton nuclear warheads. Moscow immediately warned Washington and its Arab allies, both of whom feared an imminent Israeli nuclear strike against targets that included Damascus and Cairo.

So, both Egypt and Syria halted their advances. Israeli forces, bolstered by the arrival of powerful reserve armored divisions, seized the initiative and went on to achieve a brilliant victory that included crossing the Canal and encircling Egypt’s III Corps. The fighting ended after Israel failed to seize Suez and towns on the way to Damascus. Threats of Soviet intervention and America’s resupply of almost all of Israel’s lost weapons brought the 1973 War to a close.

Egypt regained Sinai – Syria and the Palestinians got nothing. The US sank ever deeper into the turbulent affairs of the Arab world. After a bad scare, Israel triumphed as the Mideast’s premier military power.

ericmargolis.com

Syria, uncomfortably and vulnerably, finds itself sandwiched between the Ottoman hammer to the North and the Israeli anvil to the South. Both power houses are, hostile, expansionist and occupy Syrian territory. When one thinks of a ‘safe zone’ along the Syrian-Turkish border on the Syrian side, one is reminded of the American-Mexican border. Both borders face a similar security situation: one state faces security threats emanating from the neighboring state.

The American-Mexican border has long been a source of security concerns in Washington due to the influx of illegal Latin American immigrants, known pejoratively as the ‘wet backs’ – as they would get wet crossing the Rio Grande River to US mainland. To deal with border security, Trump did not consider establishing a ‘safe zone’ on the Mexican side of the border, for such a zone would have to be occupied and ruled by the American military, in violation of international law and Mexico’s sovereign and territorial integrity. Instead, Trump decided to build a wall on the American side of the border to alleviate the security threat.

Similarly, Erdogan views the concentration of anti-Turkish armed Kurds, whom he considers terrorists, on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border, a threat to Turkey’s national security. However, he does not think a wall is good enough to deal with the Kurdish threat. He opted, ironically with Trump’s blessings and partnership, to establish a 400 kilometers long – and at the moment still undecided depth – ‘safe zone’, on the Syrian side of the border, East of the Euphrates to the Iraqi border, in violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Erdogan’s insistence on having Turkish boots in the zone, in Syria, is a military occupation. A similar process West of the Euphrates covering the remaining segment of the Syrian-Turkish border, according to Erdogan, will eventually complete 800 kilometers long ‘Ottoman Belt’.

Erdogan is determined and impatient to have the zone established and have Turkish boots on the ground. Recently, in a speech in Istanbul, he said “We don’t have much time or patience regarding the security zone which will be established along our complete border, East of the Euphrates, in a few weeks. If our soldiers don’t start actual control of the area, there will not be any option except the implementation of our plans.” Erdogan choosing the zone rather than the wall raises a serious question about Erdogan’s real and ultimate intention and plans. If it is not the wall, it is not security; if it is the zone, it is occupation, similar to the Northern Cyprus precedent.

Erdogan has three objectives regarding the establishment of a safe zone; two declared short range and a third undeclared long range. The first objective is security; the withdrawal of the armed Kurdish groups from the zone, a process which appears to have started. The second objective is resettling the Turkey-based Syrian refugees in the zone. The third and insidious objective is potentially reclaiming Syrian territory which was occupied by the Ottomans for 400 years, until the end of World War I. It should be noted that the 800 kilometers Syrian-Turkish border was based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement and drawn after WWI and the demise of the Ottoman Empire; it is not a historic nor natural border. A substantial part of the border is the Orient Express rail track, built by German Christians to be the border between two antagonistic Muslim states and not to the liking of either.

Erdogan is using a double strategy in dealing with the great powers to implement his three objectives. With Europe, it is blackmail. He either gets European support, or he will facilitate shipping hundreds of thousands of refugees to Europe. With Washington and Moscow, it is ‘the other woman’. I recall the Israeli-Palestinian and the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations in the early 1990s. Whenever the Israelis didn’t get their way in one track, they would hint of reverting to the other track; so is the case with Erdogan vis-a-vis Washington and Moscow.

As for southern Syria, although Netanyahu and Erdogan overtly appear antagonist, they in fact share one common objective which is to squeeze and occupy Syrian territory. In the pursuit of their objectives, both rely on questionable historical claims and power differential between Syria on the one hand and Turkey and Israel on the other. Netanyahu’s annexation of the occupied Golan on the basis of questionable historical claims and Trump’s blessings is not objectionable to Erdogan despite his pretentious public protestations. The Ottomans occupied Syria for 400 years and Netanyahu claims the Golan historically belongs to Israel. Both Turkey and Israel have ‘recovered’ part of what they believe was theirs; Turkey ‘recovered’ Syrian Alexandretta district in 1939 and Israel ‘recovered’ two thirds of the Syrian Golan in the 1967 War and one assumes that both would like to ‘recover’ more.

There is an old Arab proverb: The camel’s nose is in the tent. Turkish tanks and soldiers are in northern Syria; Israeli military and settlements are in the Golan. The ultimate irony is that Syria, the eternal, the cradle of civilization and the home of the three monotheistic religions, has become a prey to the Ottoman and Israeli empires. What a travesty; a treachery. However, take note, Syria is not a pushover, nor is it alone.

Occasionally, however, the light does shine in darkness. The efforts by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to challenge the power of the Israel Lobby are commendable and it is worth noting that the two women are being subjected to harassment by their own Democratic Party in an effort to make them be silent. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has attempted to make them the face of the Democrats, calling them “Jew haters” and “anti-Semites” while also further claiming that they despise the United States just as they condemn Israel. This has developed into a Trump diatribe claiming that American Jews who vote for Democrats are “disloyal.” By disloyal he meant disloyal to Israel, in a sense ironically confirming that in the president’s mind Jews have dual loyalty, which, of course, at least some of them do.

And Trump has further exercised his claim to the Jewish vote by accepting the sobriquet “King of Israel” bestowed by a demented talk radio host. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already asserted that Trump’s election victory was the result of divine intervention to “save Israel from Iran,” the kingship is presumably an inevitable progression. One can only imagine what will come next.

One Democratic congressman who has apparently become fatigued by all that bipartisan pandering to Israel is Ted Lieu of California. Last Thursday Lieu rebuked Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman over his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to allow Tlaib and Omar to visit the West Bank where Tlaib’s grandmother lives under Israeli occupation. Friedman had issued a statement saying that the United States “respects and supports” the Israeli action. He went on to elaborate “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is not free speech. Rather, it is no less than economic warfare designed to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. [Israel] has every right to protect its borders against those activists in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons.”

As Friedman was describing two thirty-something nonviolent first term congresswomen as nothing less than armed attackers about to be unleashed against the Jewish state because they support a peaceful boycott movement, Lieu apparently felt compelled to courageously respond to the ambassador, tweeting “Dear @USAmbIsrael: You are an American. Your allegiance should be to America, not to a foreign power. You should be defending the right of Americans to travel to other countries. If you don’t understand that, then you need to resign.”

Later that day, on CNN, Lieu explained his objection to Friedman’s actions, saying “Actually, I think he should resign because he doesn’t see to understand that his allegiance is to America, not to a foreign power. He should be defending the right of Americans to go abroad to other countries and to visit their relatives.”

The outrage from the mighty host of friends of Israel came immediately, with accusations that Lieu was accusing Friedman of “dual loyalty,” that greatly feared derogatory label that is somewhat akin to “anti-Semitism” or “Holocaust denial” in the battery of verbal munitions used to silence critics of the Jewish state. Indeed, Lieu was accused of employing nothing less than a “classic anti-Semitic” trope.

Under considerable pressure, Lieu deleted the tweet and then issued something of an apology, “It has been brought to my attention that my prior tweet to @USAmbIsrael raises dual loyalty allegations that have historically caused harm to the Jewish community. That is a legitimate concern. I am therefore deleting the tweet.”

But the reality is, of course, that Friedman does not have dual loyalty. He has real loyalty only to Israel, which he demonstrates repeatedly by uncritically supporting everything the kleptocratic Netanyahu regime does with nary a pause to consider actual American interests. He has supported the weekly slaughter of unarmed Gazan civilians by Israeli sharpshooters, praised the bombing of Syria, pushed for the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, applauded the recognition by Washington of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and is an active supporter of and contributor to the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. He has even pressured the State Department into ceasing its use of the word “occupation” when describing the situation on the West Bank. It is now “disputed.” So, it is no surprise that David Friedman, formerly a bankruptcy lawyer before he became ambassador, lines up with Netanyahu rather than with two American Congresswomen who, apart from anything else, have good reasons to travel to a country that is the largest US aid recipient in order to see conditions on the ground. To put it mildly, Friedman is a disgrace and a reflection of the character or lack thereof of the man who appointed him. If he had any decency, he would resign.

There is no benefit for the United States when an American Ambassador excuses the brutality of a foreign government, quite the contrary as it makes Washington an accomplice in what are often undeniably war crimes. Even though Congressman Lieu was clearly read the riot act and made to fly right by his own party’s leadership, it took considerable courage to speak up against both Israel and an American ambassador who clearly is more in love with the country he is posted to than the country he is supposed to represent. Of course, in never-any-accountability Washington a buffoon posing as an ambassador as Friedman does will get away with just about anything and, as the subject is Israel, there will hardly be a word of rebuke coming from anyone, to include the mainstream media. But the tweet by Lieu is nevertheless significant. Hopefully he will be among the first of many congressmen willing to put at risk their careers at times to speak the truth.

UK ambassador Sir Kim Darroch’s “clumsy and inept” characterization of Trump’s administration aside, it is sufficient to refer to Trump’s own characterization of Syria: “We’re not talking about vast wealth. We’re talking about sand and death”. It is beyond belief that a sitting US President labeled the home of the historic Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, a land very rich in soil, an abundance of rainfall and rivers including the Euphrates and Tigris, as “sand and death”. Syria is also the cradle of civilizations, the home of the three monotheistic religions and home of three of the five oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Irrespective of Trump’s ignorant comments on Syria, his actions prove he is a dummy for ventriloquist Netanyahu. East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan were occupied in the ‘67 War. From 1967 to the Trump administration, the US went through nine administrations. Many of the presidential candidates publicly spoke of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but not once in the White House did any administration see the wisdom of doing so. Along came Trump and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.

Congress, the second center of power and decision making in Washington, has long been considered Israeli-occupied territory. In an article titled “The Only Strategic Rationale for America’s Involvement in Syria Finally Revealed,” I wrote that nearly four hundred congressmen; roughly seventy five percent of the total number of congressmen from both chambers and both parties, had written a letter to Trump. The irony, as I noted in the article, is the fact that “four hundred congressmen, who are elected by Americans to serve American interests, at a time when the US is bogged down in the Arab region, sign and submit a letter to the US President concerned almost exclusively with Israeli Security” I conclude noting: “These congressmen had an opportunity to make a coherent recommendation on US policy in the Arab region in the interest of American National Interest, but instead chose to make recommendations to safeguard the wellbeing and security of a foreign state: Israel.” More recently, also nearly four hundred House of Representatives members chose to violate the freedom of speech protected in the First Amendment of the US Constitution and vote for a resolution that rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions- BDS- campaign against Israel. Thus, the notion that US Congress is Israeli occupied territory is no exaggeration.

In Foggy Bottom, a few decades ago, there was always a group of Arabists, mostly American diplomats who had served in Arab states. They had realized that Israel is a burden on American taxpayers and American excessive support of Israel is not in the best American interest, while American interest would be better served with friendly and improved relations with the Arab states. The Arabists are no more, only Zionists; if any are left, they are reluctant to be vocal out of fear of anti-Semitic charges. Not only the Arabists have disappeared, but to top it off, now there is Mike Pompeo, an Evangelical Christian Zionist, heading the State Department. Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, in welcoming the guest of honor, Secretary Pompeo, during Israel’s 71^st Independence Day celebrations, said: “I can honestly say that Israel has never had a better friend in Foggy Bottom than you.” On another occasion, Pompeo noted that “the work our administration’s done to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state remains. I am confident that the Lord is at work here.” So, God is at it again; having originally granted the land to the Jews, now he is guarding Israel. To top it off, in a speech at the most recent AIPAC annual conference, Pompeo said, “As Secretary of State and as a Christian, I am proud to lead American diplomacy to support Israel’s right to defend itself.” Israel, God’s gift to the Jewish people and her guardian, as per Pompeo, and the only regional nuclear superpower, which has boots on sovereign grounds but no foreign boots on its grounds and a very close ally of an international superpower, would need help defending itself.

I recall a conversation I had years ago with Dr. Dori Gold, who was a close associate of Netanyahu. During the conversation, he said we are afraid of you; referring to Syria. I said Dori, you are not serious, your Air Force roams all over Syria unhindered with impunity. He said thousands of Syrian tanks with mounted guns aimed at Israel, prevent us from sleeping restfully. On another occasion, Israelis expressed a desire to eat hummus, a traditional Syrian Lebanese chickpeas appetizer, in Damascus, a significant gesture; reflecting Israel’s schizophrenia towards Syria.

At present, a central issue is the safe zone in northern Syria and Turkish, Kurdish, Syrian and Israeli configuration regarding the zone. Israel, in particular, will covertly have an important role. The zone runs several hundred kilometers east of the Euphrates to the Iraqi border and south of the Turkish-Syrian Orient Express rail track border to a depth yet to be agreed on which could run  between twenty to fourty kilometers. Israel has occupied and subsequently annexed the Golan and recently Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty of the Golan. Israel will maintain a military presence in the Golan in southern Syria, not too far from Damascus, as it has for half a century, in violation of Syrian territorial integrity and a threat to its national security. As to Syrian northern border, a Turkish occupied zone in northern Syria, a la Northern Cyprus, would also be a violation of Syrian territorial integrity and a threat to its national security. Syria caught between the hammer and the anvil; a dream come true for Israel and it will do its best to see the dream is fullfilled. The sacrificial lamb will be the Kurds; but then who cares about the Kurds other than using them as pawns in great power conflicts when needed.

Syria, Israel’s archenemy, would be surrounded on its northern and southern borders by two hostile and powerful enemies occupying Syrian land and would consider further occupation, violating Syrian territorial integrity and permanently threatening Syrian national security. However, take heed, Syria is not a pushover, nor is it alone.

The ‘Deal’, presumably a road map for peacefully settling the Palestinian problem, was drawn up, ironically, by a small group of American Zionists responsible for the formulation of American foreign policy. The group is led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law and senior presidential adviser, with help from John Bolton, national security advisor, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State and David Friedman, American ambassador in Israel. Anecdotally, it should be noted that Netanyahu is a close friend of the Kushner family and used to visit the family while in the US and stay overnight, at times in Jared’s bedroom; perhaps making Jared an unregistered foreign agent serving Israeli interests. With such strong pro-Israeli input in drawing up the ‘Deal’, what does one expect the ‘Deal’ to be except a right-wing, Likudist plan to establish a Great Israel from the River to the Sea.

A central question to this ‘Deal’ is, what does Trump have left in his pocket to offer the Palestinians? Historically, Palestinian maximum demand was the liberation of mandated Palestine. With the passage of time the Palestinians have lowered their demands to the minimum of three elements. First, a Palestinian state on the West Bank, (which David Friedman, the American ambassador no less, refers to it as Judea and Samaria). Second, East Jerusalem as its capital. Third, the return of the refugees. Trump has already given away or eliminated these three quintessential elements necessary for resolving the Palestinian problem peacefully. Trump has recognized united Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of Israel and moved the American embassy there. He has also acquiesced to Netanyahu’s declaration that he will annex the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and probably an eventual annexation of the entire West Bank. As to the Palestinian refugees, for Trump a Palestinian refugee is one who was alive when Israel was created in 1948, that is seventy one years old or more, which makes it very difficult to find many Palestinians still alive who qualify as refugees based on the criteria set by Trump. He furthermore severed political relations with the Palestinians when he ordered the closure of the PLO offices in Washington and imposed economic sanctions on the Palestinians when he stopped economic support to UNRWA.

Bearing in mind the fact that the ‘Deal’ was drawn up by Zionists in the Trump administration, it is only appropriate to expect that the ‘Deal’ will be everything Israel wants. Thus, a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian problem, in all probability, has become null and void in the foreseeable future; the ‘Deal’ offers nothing to the Palestinians and some prominent Palestinian officials have said so. Nabil Shaath, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, noted that Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ will not bring peace to Palestine. Riyad Maliki, Palestinian Foreign Minister, said that the ‘Deal of the Century’ which seeks to find the ultimate solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will bring bad news to the Middle East. Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, elaborated further, noting that “Trump and Netanyahu are planning to terminate the Palestinian cause by removing Jerusalem from any solution, annexing major settlements and finding a capital for us on the outskirts of Jerusalem.” In view of the foregoing, Mahmoud Abbas has no choice but to reject the ‘Deal’, with the consequence of being condemned for sabotaging the peace process and for Netanyahu reverting to his mantra that there are no Palestinians to negotiate with.

Although the ‘Deal of the Century’, by all indications, deals exclusively with resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict peacefully, it nevertheless has a Syrian dimension which has escaped notice and has not been dealt with in the published speculations and analysis so far. During the 1990’s, after the Madrid peace conference, there were Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations. The negotiations, both official and Track Two negotiations, in which I participated, dealt with the four central issues: Israeli withdrawal, security arrangements, timeframe for withdrawal and normalization of relations. These four issues were theoretically surmountable. A fifth issue, peace agreement between Syria and Israel had to be within the framework of a comprehensive and just peace, was insurmountable. It was very unlikely for Syria to sign a separate, unilateral peace with Israel without progress on the Palestinian-Israeli track; as Sadat did in 1979. I used to tell Palestinians, when they ask for the return of the refugees, they should reciprocate Syria’s loyalty, and ask for a double return: return of the refugees and return of the Golan. A crucial question for the Palestinian leadership is, if the Trump ‘Deal’, in the highly unlikely event, were to offer the Palestinians an acceptable ‘Deal’, meeting their minimum demands, will they sell out Syria, forget the Golan which was lost in the Palestinian cause and sign a separate peace with Israel? Only time will tell.

In conclusion, Miko Peled, an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem, writes: “Though the ‘Deal’ of the century will try to eliminate the Palestinian issue for good, what the architects of the “Deal” in their arrogance fail to see is that this so-called “Deal” is nothing more than an irresponsible, impractical and precarious plan that will fail just as soon as it is raised”.

It looked like an absurd petty vanity in 1908 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire formally annexed the obscure Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Six years later that move set off the greatest war in human history and destroyed the old empire forever.

The Israelis have just made the same mistake in getting the United States under President Donald Trump to recognize their annexation of the Golan Heights.

Israel took control of the Golan Heights on June 11, 1967 after a fiercely fought war over the territory with Syria. Israeli settlements in the northern Jordan Valley directly below the Golan had been repeatedly shelled during the previous two decades of fragile peace. The Israelis were therefore determined to keep control of the Golan area to prevent a future invasion by Syria and its allies into northern Israel. That nearly happened in the 1973 Yom Kippur War or War of Ramadan when hugely outnumbered Israeli screening forces were taken by surprise by the Syrians and only held them off in ferocious tank battles that are still closely studied today by war colleges all around the world.

That experience left the Israelis more determined than ever to hold on to the Golan territories and the Syrians more determined than ever to regain them.

Right wing nationalist Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin proved willing – eventually – to give up all of the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in the 1977-79 peace process with then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. But Begin proved implacable in his refusal to consider a similar bargain with President Hafez Assad, Syria’s leader for 30 years. In December 1981, Begin unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights.

Ironically, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s guiding strategic genius for three decades from his assumption of command as Army Chief of Staff in 1964 to his assassination while serving as prime minister in 1995, was prepared to consider returning the Golan to Syria before he was gunned down, shot in the back by Yigael Amir, a young Israeli religious-nationalist fanatic and student at Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious center of higher education Bar-Ilan University.

For the previous two decades, Rabin, during his long terms as Israeli defense minister had actually come to a remarkable quiet understanding with Assad. Both men quietly respected each other and they both loathed and distrusted Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. As a result, they proved highly effective in keeping the peace.

Clashes between Syrian and Israeli ground forces during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 were carefully kept extremely limited in scope on both sides. And apart from that brief conflict, not a single Israeli or Syrian soldier was killed in action along their joint border during all the years Rabin and Assad senior held power.

As long as Rabin and Hafez Assad both lived there was a surprising amount of stability and peace between Tel Aviv and Damascus. That condition at first continued following the passing of both men. Assad died in office in 2000 and was succeeded by his son Bashir who still rules Syria now.

But today we see a very different situation. The US and Israeli obsession with toppling Bashir Assad and ending his close ties with Iran and Hezbollah led to the catastrophic Western support of extreme Islamists, ludicrously presented as democratic forces in the Arab Spring of 2011. The US government driven by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and supported by the United Kingdom and France as well as Israel believed Assad could be quickly toppled – which indeed proved to be the fate of Libya’s veteran leader Muammar Qadafi.

But Bashir Assad proved to be made of sterner stuff. The half of Syria forced from his government’s control did not experience some golden age. Most of it fell into the merciless hands of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The ancient Assyrian Christian and other minority communities of Syria who had been protected by the Assad governments were virtually annihilated in those terrible years. The Assad government fought back. Backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, it survived and has reestablished itself. The United States and its allies refuse to recognize these realities. Trump’s move to boost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standing by legally recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan plunges both countries further into dangerous delusion.

In 1908, a short-sighted government in Vienna desperate for some illusory foreign policy “victory” unilaterally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. As with Trump’s recognition of Israeli’s permanent hold over Golan, there was absolutely no pressing reason to make the move. Austria-Hungary, like Israel and the United States today got no practical benefit at all from it. All both actions did was ensure that what could be tolerated as a temporary measure became intolerant when rubbed home as a supposedly eternal “fact.”

In 1908, at first it looked as if the Hapsburg gamblers in Vienna, like Trump and Netanyahu today got away with it. Russia, still weak from defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the failed Revolution that followed it, grumbled but stayed still.

In Serbia however, serious figures brooded and plotted revenge. When the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, visited the two provinces in June 1914, it came. Gavrilo Princip, a young gunman of the Black Hand secret society gunned down the archduke and his wife Sophie. Ironically, the archduke had been the only figure in the Hapsburg leadership determined to avert the catastrophe of general war.

Today, Trump and Netanyahu still congratulate themselves on getting the United States to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. They should not. The shadows of 1908 and 1914 in Bosnia-Herzegovina hang over them. Like the old Hapsburg Empire, they have lit a burning fuse of resentment that will not go out until it has detonated a catastrophic explosion once again fated to take Peace from the Earth.

For the indigenous people of the Levant, three major “Declarations” have brought them historic, catastrophic damage. The “First Declaration” was God giving the land of the “Indigenous People” to the “Chosen People”. The “Second Declaration”, widely referred to as “The Balfour Declaration”, was the 1917 decision by the British Government to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in the “Indigenous People’s” Palestine. The “Third Declaration”, was Trump’s announcement this week, illegally, immorally and at the expense of the “Indigenous People”, granting the Israeli-Occupied Syrian Golan to the “Chosen People”, the Jews.

Two thirds of the Syrian Golan have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 War. After the War, Lord Caradon, the British ambassador to the UN, sponsored a resolution, supported by Arthur Goldberg, the American ambassador, which was adopted unanimously by the Security Council as Resolution 242. In its preamble, Resolution 242 asserts the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”. An operative paragraph calls upon Israel “to withdraw from territories occupied” in the War. Irrespective of the controversy as to whether “withdraw from territories” means all the territory or part of the territory, the Resolution asserts the principle of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan. This resolution was subsequently followed by Security Council Resolution 338, adopted after the Arab-Israeli 1973 War, reaffirming the principles enunciated in resolution 242. Other resolutions were adopted affirming the principle of Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories.

Following the Madrid Conference of 1991, peace negotiations commenced between Israel and Syria based on the “Land for Peace” formula. The basis for negotiations presumed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and peace between the two states. In addition to the formal and public negotiations between the Syrian and Israeli delegations, there were many secret ‘Track Two Diplomacy’ negotiations in which I personally participated. Some of the Israelis I encountered were very close to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. All the Syrian-Israeli negotiations were based on the premise of Israeli withdrawal from the Golan for peace; which implied, very clearly, an Israeli admission that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory. This admission by Israel lasted for 52 years.

Irrespective of the truth, morality, legality, American national interest and in violation of International Law, international consensus, and a multitude of UN resolutions, Netanyahu recently, and suddenly, decided that the Golan belongs to Israel. This was further ratified by the farcical tweet of US President Donald Trump. The tragic content of this declaration may only, arguably, be matched by its medium of delivery; Twitter. Trump’s con job of a tweet stated: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!”

To add further insult, a resolution was submitted to the US Congress stating: “It is in the United States national security interest to ensure that Israel retains control of the Golan Heights […]” The fate of the resolution is not in doubt, particularly in view of the Jewish control of the Congress; it has been said that Congress is “Israeli occupied territory”

Netanyahu’s ludicrous claim that the Golan belongs to Israel and Trump’s ratification and complicit lunacy raises two very dangerous concerns. First, if the Golan belongs to Israel, and it liberated two thirds of it in the 1967 War, as Netanyahu claims, it stands to reason that the remaining one third of the Golan “occupied” by Syria also belongs to Israel and should be liberated. Second, since there is no international border within Syria and the Golan, a province, Netanyahu and Trump may equally – once again – unilaterally, illegally and immorally designate any Syrian contiguous territory as part of the Golan. The two have now formally set a dangerous global precedent, which de facto renders any global order, including International Law and the United Nations, irrelevant.

Since the Israeli occupation of the Golan, no Israeli government or American administration ever hinted that the Golan is sovereign Israeli territory. The Israeli governments, with American support, always expressed the willingness to withdraw from the Golan in exchange for peace; the contentious point was always the line of withdrawal. During the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations, the Syrians were not willing to surrender even a small fraction of the Golan. Trump’s handing over of the Syrian Golan to Israel is the last nail hammered in the coffin of the peace process.

Reflecting on this dangerous and destabilizing regional development, I cannot help but wonder if Netanyahu claims sovereignty over the Syrian Golan, what is to stop him from claiming the historically and religiously more relevant Judea and Samaria. What is to stop Trump from ratifying and enforcing these claims. As according to Judaism, God’s promises of Judea and Samaria would mean an eventual Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the establishment of “Great Israel” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

What the ‘under-investigation’ conmen, Netanyahu and Trump, have done, and the US Congress will follow soon, is not a panacea for regional stability; it is a road map for permanent upheaval: The paradox of an irresistible force colliding with an immovable object.

In its annual US State Department report, the section dealing with the Golan Heights reportedly refers to the contested area as “Israeli-controlled”, not “Israeli-occupied”. The change in wording deviates from United Nations resolutions and international norm which use the term “Israeli-occupied” to designate the land Israel annexed from Syria following the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel has occupied the western part of the Golan since 1967 as a spoil from that war. In 1981, Tel Aviv formally annexed the Syrian territory. However, the UN Security Council in 1981, including the US, unanimously condemned the annexation as illegal. The resolution mandates Israel to return the land to Syria which has historical claim to the entire Golan. The area of 1,800 square kilometers is a strategic elevation overlooking the northern Jordan Valley.

If Washington confirms its recent indications of recognizing the Golan as officially part of Israel, the development would mark an egregious flouting of international law.

But what’s more, such a move totally prohibits Washington from posturing with presumed principle over the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which since 2014 voluntarily became part of Russia.

Just last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated accusations against Russia of “annexing” Crimea. Pompeo insisted that US sanctions against Moscow would be maintained until Russia “returns Crimea to Ukraine”.

“The world has not forgotten the cynical lies Russia employed to justify its aggression and mask its attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory,” he said. “The United States will maintain respective sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine.”

Last year, Pompeo’s State Department issued a ‘Crimea Declaration’ in which it was stated that, “Russia undermines a bedrock of international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force.”

Claims by Washington and the European Union of “illegal annexation” of Crimea by Russia are the central basis for five years of economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. Those sanctions have contributed to ever-worsening tensions with Russia and the build-up of NATO forces along Russia’s borders.

Those claims are, however, highly contestable. The people of Crimea voted in a legally constituted referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. That referendum followed an illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 backed by the US and Europe against a legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared cultural heritage with Russia. Its erstwhile position within the state of Ukraine was arguably an anomaly of the Cold War and subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union.

In any case, there is scant comparison between the Golan Heights and Crimea, save, that is, for the latest hypocrisy in Washington. While Crimea and its people are arguably historically part of Russia, the Golan Heights are indisputably a sovereign part of Syria which was forcibly annexed by Israeli military occupation.

The illegality of Israel’s occupation of Golan is a matter of record under international law as stipulated in UNSC Resolution 497.

There is no such international mandate concerning Crimea. Claims of Russia’s “annexation” are simply a matter of dubious political assertion made by Washington and its European allies.

The latest move by Washington towards recognizing Golan as part of Israel – in defiance of international law – comes on the back of several other recent developments.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made a tour of Israeli-occupied Golan last week in the company of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointedly transported by an IDF military helicopter. Graham said following his tour that he would recommend the Trump administration to officially recognize the area as under Israeli sovereignty.

Currently, there is legislation going through both the US Senate and House of Representatives which is aimed at declaring the entire Golan as Israeli territory.

The stark shift in pro-Israeli bias in Washington under the Trump administration is consistent with the White House declaring at the end of 2017 that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Again, that move by President Trump overturned international consensus and UN resolutions which have stipulated Jerusalem to be a shared capital between Israel and a future Palestinian state, to be worked out by (defunct) peace negotiations.

Why Washington has taken up the Golan issue as a prize for Israel at this time is not precisely clear. It could be seen as the Trump administration giving a political boost to Netanyahu for next month’s elections.

There has been previous speculation that Trump is doing the bidding for a US-based oil company, Genie Oil, which is linked to his administration through his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family investments. The New Jersey company has a subsidiary in Israel, is tied to the Netanyahu government, and has long been aiming to drill the Golan for its abundant oil resources.

The Golan move could also be retribution meted out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his country’s historic defeat of the US-backed covert war for regime change. The nearly eight-year war was also covertly backed by Israel which sponsored jihadist militia operating out of the Golan against the Syrian army. Having vanquished the US regime-change plot, thanks to crucial military support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the payback could be Washington stepping up Israeli claims to annex the Golan.

But whatever the background explanation is, the initiative by Washington to legalize the annexation of Golan by Israel is a brazen violation of international law. In doing so, the US is officially sponsoring war crimes and theft of Syria’s sovereign territory. Or as the Crimea Declaration would put it: “changing the borders of another country by force” – supposedly a “bedrock principle” that Washington continually sermonizes about to Russia.

Crimea and Golan are different issues of territorial dispute, as noted already. Nevertheless, the duplicity of Washington over Golan makes its posturing on Crimea null and void. If the Europeans meekly go along with the US move on Golan, then they too should shut their mouths and their moralizing sanctions over Crimea.

 A new bill recently introduced in the Senate, along with its companion bill in the House, would result in the United States government recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The territory was later annexed in 1981, but the international community — including the United States — has not recognized Israel’s claim to the Syrian territory.

In addition, the bill would also promote the U.S. conducting “joint projects” with Israel in the Golan, including “industrial research and development.” This is sure to result in joint U.S.-Israeli efforts to extract the large oil reserves recently discovered in the Golan Heights, as the rights to extract that oil were granted to the joint U.S.-Israeli venture Genie Energy soon after its discovery was made public.

The move to introduce legislation regarding the contested territory has been hinted at for months by top Israeli officials, especially following the decision of the Trump administration to unilaterally recognize the city of Jerusalem as belonging exclusively to Israel and as being that country’s capital.

Working the Iran angle

Last May, Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Reuters that Washington’s endorsement of Israel’s control of the Golan Heights was now “topping the agenda” in bilateral diplomatic talks between the two countries, and that such a move would likely come within a matter of months, though it apparently took longer than Katz had originally anticipated.

Katz also had stated that U.S. recognition of the Golan was being peddled to the Trump administration as a way to further counter Iran, the goal that has now become the guiding force behind President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy. In addition, Katz had stated that bilateral discussions regarding U.S. recognition of the Golan had vastly expanded to involve various levels of the U.S. administration as well as several Congressmen.

The effort to which Katz alluded last year appears to have paid off in the form of the recently introduced bills in both the House and the Senate. The Senate bill was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is the top Republican recipient of pro-Israel lobby contributions in the U.S. Senate, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is also heavily funded by the pro-Israel lobby. Indeed, Cotton received over $700,000 from the Emergency Committee for Israel in 2014 and nearly $1 million from that same group a year later.

This basis for punishing Syria by weakening its claim to the Golan is dubious at best. Indeed, the Syrian government’s alleged use of “weapons of mass destruction,” apparently a reference to chemical weapons, is a contested matter given the fact that many, if not all, of those alleged chemical weapons attacks were either staged or involved chemical weapons instead used by rebel groups backed by the United States and its regional allies, including Israel. The United States has also repeatedly and illegally used a chemical weapon, white phosphorus, in its military operations in Syria.

In addition, the bill fails to note that the U.S. has killed scores of Syrian civilians in its military operations in Syria — including in Raqqa, where civilian bodies are still being uncovered nearly two years after the U.S.-led “liberation” of that city. Apparently, only the Syrian government’s civilian death toll has “diplomatic and geopolitical consequences.”

Furthermore, the latter point of Syria’s alleged ethnic cleansing of “Arab Sunnis” is sharply ironic given Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, most of whose inhabitants are also “Arab Sunnis,” as well as the fact that U.S.-backed rebel groups ethnically cleansed large parts of Syria from religious minority groups such as Christians and Yazidis.

Thus, the justification for giving the Golan to Israel as a means of punishing Syria is just window dressing for the Israeli government push to consolidate its control over the territory with the help of its allies in the U.S. government. Despite that, the bill has a good chance of passing the Senate, given that chamber’s recent and overwhelming bipartisan approval of the so-called “anti-BDS” bill that had been pushed by the pro-Israel lobby as a means of countering nonviolent efforts to protest Israel’s inhumane occupation of Palestine.

Cover for the oil

Despite Israel’s eagerness to consolidate control over the territory, any U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan would likely generate backlash from the majority of the international community and would likely heighten tensions between Israel and Syria. This is largely because international law still refuses to recognize the area as part of Israel, even though Israel has sent over 20,000 Jewish settlers to live there in order to permanently change the area’s ethnic-demographic composition, turning the native Druze population into a minority.

Many of the Druze living in the occupied Golan have long complained of being routinely discriminated against under Israeli rule, and continue to support the Syrian government. In addition, the UN has accused Israel of “forcing citizenship” onto the group in a bid to increase its claim to sovereignty over the region. Israel hopes to add an additional 100,000 Jewish settlers to the area by 2020 in order to strengthen this claim.

A Druze man watches fighting between Syrian troops and rebels in the village of Jubata al-Khashab, as seen from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, on, Sept. 11, 2016. Ariel Schalit | AP

While any such measure is unlikely to gain much traction internationally, it is important to note that the goal of a U.S. measure to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan is not to secure international support but to provide enough diplomatic cover for the joint U.S.-Israeli extraction and use of the area’s strategic resources, namely oil. Indeed, in 2015, a massive oil reserve was discovered in the Golan Heights and is estimated to contain “billions of barrels” of crude oil that could turn Israel – which currently imports the vast majority of its fuel – into a net oil exporter.

Soon after that discovery, the Israeli government granted exclusive drilling rights to Afek, an Israeli subsidiary of New Jersey-based energy company Genie Energy, Ltd. As MintPress has previously reported, Genie Energy is backed by powerful interests in the U.S., such as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former Vice President and Halliburton executive Dick Cheney, and former CIA Director James Woolsey. Powerful Zionist billionaires, such as Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch and England’s Jacob Rothschild, are also connected to the company. Its Israeli subsidiary, Afek, is run by a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

MintPress has previously reported that Genie Energy’s investments in the Golan are likely the strongest factor guiding the U.S. towards the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territory. Indeed, without a U.S. move recognizing Israel’s control over the region, Genie’s Israeli subsidiary is unable to sell any oil it extracts from the occupied territory on the international oil market.

This argument is strongly supported by the text of the current bill, which specifically calls for joint U.S.-Israeli projects in the Golan that include projects in “basic and applied scientific fields” and “industrial research and development.”

Oil and water do mix

In addition to oil, the Golan Heights contains important freshwater resources, as it is one of three sources of freshwater available to the Israeli state. It is the largest in size and most abundant, as it includes the mountain streams that feed Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the headwaters of the Jordan River. As MintPress has noted in the past, the water resources of the Golan Heights are essential not only to Israel’s existence but also to its expansionist ambitions, a fact that explains Israel’s role in creating a plan in 2006 to engineer a “civil war” in Syria. Yet, the discovery of oil and creation of Genie Energy have dramatically strengthened Israel’s resolve, as well as the resolve of powerful figures in the U.S. and the U.K., to consolidate control over the Golan.

However, the current text of this new bill suggests that the use of this water will also come into play in the joint U.S.-Israeli project it calls for in “strategic and applied research of agricultural problems.”

Originally, Israel had planned to use a “buffer zone” of extremist militants it was funding in southern Syria in order to push for international recognition of the Golan, particularly in the event that the Syrian conflict resulted in regime change in Damascus. However, as South Front noted late last year, the Syrian military’s defeat of those groups has dealt “a huge blow to Tel Aviv’s plans to make the international community recognize the annexation of the Golan Heights” and led then-Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to worry that the Syrian military’s success could soon threaten Israel’s hold on the Syrian territory.

Thus, Israel is now pushing for the U.S. to recognize its sovereignty over the Golan for fear of losing it completely, even though such recognition could result in an all-out war between Israel and Syria, as well as with Syrian allies such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Given that Israel has been preparing for such a war for well over a year and that Israel has been given the authority to bring U.S. troops into that conflict if and when it occurs, the likely consequences of the passage of this bill should be treated with the gravity they deserve.

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