By recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, the United States
has turned itself into a pariah state, blessing and glorifying the violation of human rights.
It’s obviously significant that after decades of refusing to recognize sovereignty, Donald
Trump has given this massive election boost to Netanyahu by recognizing the sovereignty
of the Golan Heights.
And what’s missing, though, Amy, from the coverage of the whole saga of recognizing
the Golan Heights is no one actually is talking about the people of the Golan Heights, what
they want and what they seek.
And the people of the—the Syrian people in the Golan Heights have reiterated, time
and time again, that this, their land, is Syrian.
It’s not a disputed land.
It’s not a contested land.
It’s a Syrian land.
And they have done everything in their power in order to defy Israel’s attempts to Judaize
their land.
Since 1967, and especially since the annexation in 1981, the people of the Golan have risen
up several times against Israel’s annexation.
In 1982, actually, in February 1982, they’ve waged a 5-month general strike and a civil
disobedience campaign that would go on to inspire Palestinians during the First Intifada,
stressing that they refuse to hold Israeli identification cards and that they refuse
all attempts to erase their Syrian identity.
Again, in 2018, last October, Israel tried to impose municipal elections in the Golan
Heights as a gesture of its sovereignty over their territory.
And again Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights took to the streets in mass in order to oppose
the holding electoral municipal elections in their lands and saying—stressing that
they are Syrian.
During these decades, only just 6 percent of the entire residents of the Golan Heights
have applied for Israeli citizenship, meaning that the vast majority of people, the overwhelming
majority of Syrians in the Golan Heights, recognize and identify themselves as Syrians—again,
despite Israel’s imposition of a curriculum that tries to erase Syrian identity and replace
it with an artificial Jewish identity.
We’re talking about 27,000 people living—mainly Syrian—living in the occupied Golan Heights
who have been systematically discriminated against in terms of resources, whose resources
have been exploited.
We’re also talking about 230,000 Syrians who have been displaced in 1967, more than
a half-million Syrian refugees from the Golan Heights who continue to be denied their right
of return.
We’re talking about families that have been fragmented between the Golan Heights and Syria.
And we’re also talking about Israel’s continued exploitation of this resource-rich
area and continued attempts to control and monopolize tourism and to claim sovereignty
over the territory.
And Trump’s move recognizing, and signing this executive order, gives blessing to these
continued violations and erases an entire people off the map.
One friend in the Golan Heights had told me that it’s bizarre that a person who probably
has never heard of the Golan Heights before that, he gives himself the right, entitles
himself, to acknowledge Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.
It’s neither Trump’s to recognize this sovereignty, and it’s neither Israel’s
to take.
And this is—we’ve seen this happen in Jerusalem last year, when [the United States]
moved its embassy, and except for a few rhetoric and few condemnation here and there, nothing
actually happened.
No punitive measures have been taken against the U.S. move to move its embassy to Jerusalem
and to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
And if we only get rhetorics, the same will happen.
And this is the danger.
Obviously, people in the Golan will continue to resist and will continue to protest, as
they’ve always done, but this is an extremely dangerous step.
And this signals that the United States, again, doesn’t give any regard to human rights
or to international law or to international humanitarian law.