What does the Golan tell us?

The Golan Heights, which Israel has held under occupation since 1967, have been one of the most important issues of the Arab-Israeli dispute for 52 years. They contain water resources and are Syria's most important, most fertile and strategic lands. Israel too was acknowledging that it had no right over these heights it occupied in '67, but even if they were a matter of disagreement, it kept holding them with its de facto power and continued to exploit their resources.

Throughout this time the Syrian Baath regime, ever since the elder Assad, used the occupied status of the Golan Heights as a grievance against its own people and as one of the justifications of an official ideology of enmity toward Israel.

The wretchedness in the aggrieved language used in the briefing on the subject presented to us by the Syrian authorities during a visit to Syria in 2003 was very striking. Against this victimhood, what was the Syrian state doing?

We suddenly felt the need to recall how the Golan Heights had come to fall into Israel's hands. In fact this subject provided definitive information that the Assad regime was in complete cooperation with the Zionist Israeli regime. It is a fact known to everyone that in 1967 the elder Assad, who was then Commander of the Air Force, evacuated the Golan without any resistance. At that time there was a strong Syrian land force in the Golan, and against these forces it was not even considered possible for Israel to record any success given the balance of power of the time. Yet, strangely, before any clash or encounter had even occurred, news had already begun to be broadcast on the radios that the Syrian units had "unfortunately" been forced to withdraw in the face of Israel's intense attacks. The clearest explanation of the event was that Assad, who was responsible for the Syrian units defending the Golan, had already abandoned ("sold") the Golan to Israel.

Assad, who abandoned the Golan to Israel that day without resistance or clash, would shortly afterwards come to the head of Syria by a coup, and during his time in power would do nothing but weep for the Golan and curse Israel for holding the Golan under occupation. This whining language remained for years as the official ideology of Syria and an important characteristic of the Syrian regime.

In contrast, the fact that the Golan is Syrian land under Israeli occupation did not change.

In international law, Israel's holding this land under occupation was a crime. That the international community, which moved under ABD leadership against Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, did not move to free the Golan, and in fact the other Palestinian lands, was in itself enough to show how false international law is. With the Golan standing there as it was, the real justification of the intervention in Iraq under the pretext of its occupation of Kuwait, rather than international law, was in the end again nothing other than the so-called security of occupier Israel.

Now a step has been taken that turns international law into complete black comedy. A land belonging to one country was donated by another country to a country that has held it under occupation for 52 years. The ABD has presented a land belonging to Syria as a gift to Israel. Let alone international law, ABD President Trump, exceeding all the limits of both himself and international law and custom, has opened a way for this practice, which has no place in any law.

That the first reactions to this practice came from countries such as Russia, Canada, Japan and Venezuela, with Turkey foremost among them, while among Islamic countries the other reactions, apart from the first reactions of Qatar, Palestine and Lebanon, remained feeble, is of course not surprising. The wholehearted participation of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt in the normalization of Arab countries' relations with Israel within the framework of the "Deal of the Century," recently launched by Trump and his son-in-law Kushner, probably does not cover Israel's annexation of the Golan occupation in this way. Yet it becomes inevitable that the complicity provided by "normalization" also prevents an effective response to such steps.

The decision of Islamic countries to normalize relations with Israel clearly does not prevent Israel's aggression and Zionist expansionism; it provokes and encourages them further. Normalization does not bring with it Israel's treating the peoples of the region with a little more respect or observing their rights and law; on the contrary, it makes it even more unruly. It is impossible for the countries party to normalization not to be aware of this. This shows that the Golan Heights, or the Palestinian cause in general, is only being sold through a betrayal. Those who carry out this sale and betrayal, which emboldens Israel, are the ones who do so.

Meanwhile, whatever the attitude and stance of the states, the Arab-Muslim peoples have written this rampant Zionism and the ABD behind it, the ABD that is handing over their own lands to Israel, on the same line of fate.

In our last article we said that the ABD is losing a great deal for love of Israel. It regards the Middle East as consisting of Israel alone, whereas the Middle East does not consist of Israel alone. Every bit of support it gives Israel, with all its aggression and terrorism, ultimately becomes a step toward the ABD's total erasure from the Middle East. Let it regard itself as a superpower as much as it likes.