From the “nobody should be surprised but everyone should be shocked” department, Israel has apparently decided that it’s going to keep the Golan heights.
The argument is deceptively simple: “nobody in the international community really likes Assad, therefore fuck Syria.”
As I’ve mentioned before [stderr] it has always appeared as though Israel’s “manifest destiny” is to occupy the entire territory that the zionists have identified as “greater Israel” – no matter what and who does not approve of that activity. The whole process of negotiating with the international community (not the Palestinians) regarding the Palestinians is just window-dressing; it’s much like the many treaties that the US signed with the Native Americans, none of which it failed to violate when the time seemed right. The strategy of “creeping death” displacement and genocide works that way – you keep establishing a new normal slowly. Note that the target of this public relations project is not the Palestinians, who know exactly what is going on, just like the Native Americans did, it’s to provide a fig-leaf to the international community. It’s always struck me as odd that anyone expected any more from the international community than they’ve seen: after all, generations of colonialism and genocide seemed OK with them – why are they going to lift a finger, now? Not that them lifting a finger would accomplish anything, anyway.
[reuters]
JERUSALEM, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Israel will keep the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in a 1967 war, even if international views on Damascus change, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday.
In 2019, then U.S. President Donald Trump broke with other world powers by recognising Israel as sovereign on the Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981 in a move not recognised internationally.
Bennett’s remarks came as the current U.S. administration hedges on the Golan’s legal status and some U.S.-allied Arab states ease their shunning of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his handling of a decade-old civil war.
Addressing a conference about the Golan’s future, Bennett said the internal Syrian strife had “persuaded many in the world that perhaps it is preferable that this beautiful and strategic territory be in the State of Israel’s hands.
Sure, yeah. Just like that.
Likudsraum, (n.) slow motion land theft.
In Israel the Golan is very popular among the Jewish sector. It is beautiful, and doesn’t have that many ‘minorities’ (most escaped in June 1967). (And the reason it looks better than many other areas is that by the time the Israeli government started settling it in an organized manner there was already some awareness of environmental issues, so at least the natural water is cleaner.) So it is very much a national consensus issue, with no argument between left and right, in contrast with the West Bank, or the former Gaza Strip settlements. In the 1990s it was very common to see banners reading ‘The People With the Golan’ hanging from balconies. At least some of that was in response to the prospects of possible negotiations over the Golan with Syria. I suppose now that the government is a weird coalition with not much holding it together making noise about the Golan makes political sense.
Will keep it as long as they have Big Brother looking out for them.