Syria's Golan Heights: Can International Law Forestall a
Golanian Intifada?
21 October 2009By Franklin Lamb
Pressure increasing on Syria's government to retake
the Heights by force
Nationals from nearly one-third of the 192 member
states of the United Nations met in Damascus last week
to discuss the Return/Liberation of the Golan Heights.
An estimated 5000 researchers, Lawyers, politicians,
activists, victims of Israel's 42 years of occupation,
students and members of the public, attended the
opening event in Qunaitra, the Golan capital city,
which in a frenzy of frustration at being forced to
return the city it had occupied since 1967 (Comment:
think Gaza 2005), the Israeli ordered bulldozed,
shelled, and booby trapped by its retreating forces as
Qunaitra was surrendered to Syria.
The Conference heard the likes of former US Attorney
General Ramsey Clark argue that the International
community and rules of International law could not be
clearer in requiring the full return of the 1,860 sq.
meters of the Syrian territory, despite Israeli claims
over the years of 'border irregularities'
As the International Court of Justice declared in the
Burkina Faso and Malie cases, two former French
colonies, the frontier existing at the moment of
independence, which Syria achieved in April 1946, is
frozen like a snapshot taken at the exact moment of
Independence.
Some attendees at the large Damascus conclave, often
huddling on the sidelines, discussed, analyzed and
even advocated a Golan Intifada. They argued that the
whole international community, except Israel, and the
full corpus of international law, supported the
immediate and complete return of the Syrian Golan
Height's to the nearly 350,000 displaced Golan
inhabitants, being those who make up 90% of the
Golan's pre-1967 population from the 130 villages and
112 agricultural areas Israel destroyed as it occupied
the Golan. These delegates explained to observers that
Resistance in all its forms may be the most realistic
path for the return of the Golan. They point to the
success of the Hezbollah led National Lebanese
Resistance in regaining most of Lebanon's Zionist
occupied territory.
One Golani who studies in Damascus told this observer,
"We don't expect help from Hezbollah. They have made
clear to us they do not "do branches" in other
countries despite requests for help around the region,
but we have learned much from their experience and we
will apply their logic and tactics."
"Syria is rising" another joined in, "we are strong
psychologically, militarily and as a result of more
democracy the past several years our people are united
and we are motivated to seek the immediate return of
our land, whatever it takes."
They argued that what Hezbollah did in Lebanon, and
what Hamas is doing in Gaza, Syrian patriots can do in
the Golan. They believe they would be joined by
thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese that might well
lead to an unprecedented violent eruption of the
Middle East.
One Conference student volunteer interpreter from
Damascus University wearing a Hijab, quoted Lebanon's
Senior Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein
Fadlallah, who heads social services agencies here in
Syria and he does in Lebanon. Ayatollah Fadlallah
frequently argues from the grand Mosque in Dahiyeh
that all Arab Muslim and non-Muslims must join to
fight against Israel, "because when the enemy launched
a war against Palestine and the Arab world, including
the Golan Heights, it was legal and obligatory to
declare war in response to regain stolen land."
There appears to be building pressure on the Bashar
Assad government to act or allow a popular Intifada,
despite analysts here arguing that it is unlikely that
his government would agree near term. Many here are
encouraged by Bishop Desmond Tutu's fact finding
report of September 2008 to the Human Rights Council
on the Israeli shelling of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza
Strip in 2006, which led to the death of nineteen
civilians as well as the growing international
reaction to last month's Goldstone Report on Gaza.
International law and the Golan Heights
The law on the subject and the demolition of Israel's
arguments for retaining the Golan could barely be more
complete. In addition to many UN resolutions
condemning Israel's Golan takeover as violations of
customary international law and Article 2 (4) of the
UN Charter which outlaws the acquisition of territory
by force and requiring the immediate withdrawal of
Israeli armed forces from the Golan Heights virtually
all legal analysts agree on the imperative of full
return.
One of the Israel lobby's iconic and repeatedly
amplified myths has been that Syria indiscriminate
rained artillery shells on peaceful Jewish settlements
on the plain of Galilee without provocation thus
allowing Israeli to invade as part of its right of
self-defense.
Among the scores who have exposed this canard are
Israeli authors such as Professor Avi Shlaim, in his
volume "The Myth of the Golan Heights" in which he
writes: "They (the Israelis) began by staking an
illegal claim to the sovereignty over the
(demilitarized) zone and then proceeded, as
opportunity offered, to encroach on all the specific
provisions against introducing armed forces and
fortification. They repeatedly obstructed the
operations of the UN observers (comment: think
Lebanon) , on one occasion even threatening to kill
them…They expelled, or otherwise forced out, Arab
inhabitants and razed their villages to the ground."
Moreover, Moshe Dayan, Israel's Minister of Defense at
the time, explained to an Israeli journalist in 1976:
"I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there
(on the Golan front) started. In my opinion, more than
80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went
this way: we would send a tractor to plough someplace
where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the
demilitarized area and knew in advance that the
Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we
would tell the tractor to advance further, until in
the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And
then we would use artillery and later the air force
also, and that's how it was…" (The Golan: Ending
Occupation, Establishing Peace, London, 2007).
Dayan later added, "There was really no pressing
reason to go to war with Syria…..the kibbutz residents
who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights
did it less for security than for the farmland."
Syrians cite the human rights situation in the Golan
as no longer tolerable, as noted in various UN reports
as "persistent" and "significant deterioration". A
2002 UN Special Committee report described the
repression of the Syrian inhabitants under Israel
occupation as "extensive, affecting, all aspect of
life and families, villages and communities", adding
that "there are also widespread economic consequences
of the occupation."
All Syrians interviewed during and following the
October 11-12th Conference appear bitter over the
separation of families who live on either side of the
valley constituting the demarcation line. Syrian
students return to their families in the occupied
Golan face, several hours of questioning and even the
presents they bring are confiscated. Others are held
in arbitrary detention for many days, facing torture
and humiliation.
A 1998 Human Rights Watch report of the Golan Heights
concludes that "Israel seriously misrepresents the
degree of its fulfillment of its treaty obligations"
under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights it signed in January 1992.
For the international community, including the United
Nations and American and European policy makers the
choice appears to be implement International law or
witness another explosion in this volatile region.
Franklin Lamb is Director of the Washington-DC,
Beirut Lebanon Sabra-Shatila Foundation and can be
reached at fplamb@sabrashatila.org.
**Courtesy of My Lamb, this article of his firstly
appeared here on December 4th 2009
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