The U.S. Should Recognize Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan

Israel seized the Golan Heights—an area whose Jewish history goes back to biblical times—from Syria during the Six-Day War and formally applied Israeli law there in 1981. While the U.S. has from time to time encouraged or pressured Jerusalem to enter negotiations for returning the territory to Damascus, any such idea, given Syria’s current state of affairs, is at present a nonstarter. Therefore, argue Moshe Ya’alon and Yair Lapid, it’s high time for Washington, and the rest of the world, to recognize Israeli sovereignty there:

The Golan Heights is . . . a mountainous region of around 695 square miles in the north of Israel. It’s worth noting, of course, that [the region] is entirely unrelated to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Not a single Palestinian lives there. . . . The Syrians . . . ruled over the Golan Heights for only 21 years, from 1946 and 1967. During those years they turned the Golan into a military base, rained rocket fire on the Israeli communities [below], and tried to divert Israel’s critical water sources. . . .

In the 51 years [it has controlled the area], Israel developed the Golan Heights and turned it into an impressive center of nature reserves and tourism, with high-tech agriculture, award-winning wines, a flourishing food-tech industry, and in-demand boutique hotels. The Druze population of the Golan Heights, who make up about half the population, were granted all the same rights as all other citizens of Israel. . . .

On the other side of the border, life went in the other direction; in the past seven years President Assad has massacred over a half-million of his own people and [caused] the displacement of eleven million more. He let the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah, the largest terror organizations in the world, into Syria. He encouraged Shiite militias from Iraq and elsewhere to flood into his country. . . .

The man who didn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons against women and children continues to demand the Golan Heights in the name of “international law.” The fact that anyone in the Western world still takes that argument seriously is worse than naïve—it’s insane. Does his monstrous behavior have no cost? . . . The international community, led by the United States, needs to do the simple thing: to announce that they see the world as it is.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Bashar al-Assad, Druze, Golan Heights, Israel & Zionism, Syrian civil war

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy