https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/newsletter
“We are seeing before us a major crisis between Russia and Ukraine, between Russia and the West… but interestingly enough, many of these people who are making quite strong statements about this issue and fair enough, don’t seem to be saying the same things about another occupation, that has been going on for fifty years in the Golan Heights,” began former UN correspondent for Al Jazeera television, Mark Seddon, on Palestine Deep Dive’s latest live show.
The show titled: “Sheikh Jarrah & the Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem & Beyond” was streamed live on Deep Dive’s YouTube channel, as well as on The Palestine Chronicle’s Facebook page on Wednesday 23rd February.
In conversation with Mark Seddon was Jerusalem-based Palestinian writer and legal expert Budour Hassan.
“Nobody’s talking about sanctions against Israel, nobody ever has for doing that. Why is this? Why this inconsistency.”
“Budour, I wonder from where you are sitting you see what’s happening in eastern Ukraine and you have seen, you’ve been living with this occupation, but specifically with Golan Heights, which was an invasion, or occupation of territory that belongs to Syria and yet nobody’s talking about sanctions against Israel, nobody ever has for doing that. Why is this? Why this inconsistency?”
Jerusalem-based Palestinian writer and legal expert Budour Hassan responded by outlining the realities of over 50 years of Israel’s occupation and illegal annexation of the Golan Heights:
“The Syrian-Golan had been occupied in 1967. Israel ethnically cleansed the Syrian-Golan, depopulating 95% of its original Syrian citizens, turning them into refugees.”
“The Syrian-Golan had been occupied in 1967. Israel ethnically cleansed the Syrian-Golan, depopulating 95% of its original Syrian citizens, turning them into refugees. Of the 138,000 Syrians who had lived in the Golan in 1967, only some 6,000 remained, and of course, Israel destroyed most of the villages and farms in the Golan and confiscated its land. Only six villages remained – four of them Syrian-Druze villages. And the years that followed Israel started building settlements, started extracting the resources of the Golan and consolidating its occupation.”
United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 issued on December 17 1981, declared Israel’s decision to “impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration” in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to be “null and void” and “without international legal effect.”
“The other reason why your question is so timely is because last December on the 40th anniversary of Israel’s unilateral annexation of the Golan, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to double the number of Israeli Jewish colonists in the Golan. It is a $300 million plan according to which, by 2030, the number of Israeli colonists living in the Golan would be doubled from some 25,000 to 50,000.”
Rather than call for sanctions for the ongoing illegal annexation and colonisation of the Golan Heights by Israel, former US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2019 recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied area.
A move widely denounced as a violation of international law that prohibits states from acquiring land by force.
Rather than reverse Trump’s order, Biden has been reluctant to address Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of the Golan Heights since taking office last year. Instead, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN in an interview last February, “Look, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security.”
