You probably didn’t know (and continued with your relatively happy lives anyway) but in 1968, the UN established a Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories. And, according to The New Arab, said committee has announced that “the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied Golan Heights has surpassed that of the Syrian native population for the first time since 1967.”
The committee didn’t offer a figure.
At the beginning of the Six-Day War, Syrian planes bombed civilian and military targets in Israel. In response, the Israeli Air Force attacked airports in Syria as part of Operation Focus. On June 6, the Syrians shelled the settlements of northern Galilee, and Syrian forces attacked the Ashmura outpost and Kibbutz Dan. Despite this––and years of Syrian harassment from the Golan mountains of Israeli settlements along the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret––then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol refused to consider invading the Golan. Legend has it that on the fifth day of the War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan pretended not to hear Eshkol’s expressed order over the wireless to stay off the Golan, and corrected a 19-year wrong.
The December 14, 1981, Golan Heights Act abolished the military government and applied Israeli law to the Golan, effectively annexing it, although it doesn’t mention the word “annexation” anywhere. The fact is that annexing eastern Jerusalem and, hopefully soon, Judea and Samaria, is far more legal than the annexation of the Golan. The “west bank” was never recognized universally as belonging to Jordan, whereas the Golan was an integral part of Syria.
All Druze residents on the Golan were invited to become Israeli citizens if they so desired. Residents who refused to become naturalized received resident status in Israel. Only a few of them chose to receive Israeli citizenship.
According to the UN committee, “Israeli policies and practices on the Golan isolate the population from their familial and cultural links to Syria and enforce integration into the Israeli economy and education system, for lack of any alternative.”
In reality, the reason the Golan Druze are isolated from their families in Syria is the result of the Assad government allowing Iran to spread its proxies along the Israeli border, turning the area into an active war zone. Still, as of October 2018, the Quneitra crossing is open at the Syrian border, and the Druze are free to visit and, if they so wish, stay in Syria.
The UN committee, which is scheduled to deliver its report to the United Nations General Assembly in October, noted that Israel has prevented its officers from entering Israel, the PA, and the Golan Heights, and “does not respond to annual requests for consultations with the Israeli authorities.”
Makes sense.
