ON MONDAY, US President Donald Trump signed a declaration that recognised Israeli ‘sovereignty’ over Syria’s Golan Heights.
The strategically important Golan Heights are recognised in international law and by the UN as being Syrian territory which was seized by the state of Israel during the Six-Day War in 1969.
In 1981, the Israeli government passed a law officially annexing the Golan Heights, a move that has never been recognised as legitimate by the UN, which has always designated it as illegally occupied Syrian territory, with the UN Security Council declaring the move ‘null and void without international legal effect’.
None of these international legal niceties bother Trump as he signed this declaration in the presence of a beaming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
While the New York Times called Trump’s move a ‘pointless provocation’ that had ‘more to do with Israeli politics than American interests’ – a reference to the upcoming Israeli elections – the truth is that, far from being pointless, it is in fact part of US imperialism’s strategy to destroy any plan for a Palestinian state, confront Syria, and then mobilise Arab reaction for a great war with Iran.
By legitimising the seizure of land through military occupation, Trump has lit the fuse for an almighty conflagration throughout the entire region. aThe implications of Trump’s move have certainly not been lost on the Israelis.
An unnamed senior diplomatic source told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that: ‘Everyone says you can’t hold an occupied territory, but this proves you can. If occupied in a defensive war, then it’s ours.’
Of course, all Israeli wars and murders are carried out under the cover of being ‘defensive’. The massive land grab in the late 1960s of Syrian and Palestinian lands were all sanctified as defensive along with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The killing of nearly 200 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children by Israeli snipers last year during the Great March of Return demonstrations in Gaza was dismissed as defensive.
All these and every other atrocity committed by the Zionist regime have now been given the seal of approval by US imperialism as justification for seizing and annexing Palestinian land in Gaza and the West Bank.
This is part of Trump’s so-called ‘deal of the century’ to deal with the Palestinians once and for all by Israel completely annexing Palestine, and putting Palestine under the Israeli ‘iron heel’.
His declaration also opens up the prospect of Israeli wars of conquest against not only Syria, which will not accept the loss of the Golan, but also the Lebanon and its Hezbollah movement, that has proven to be such a great thorn in the side of the USA and Israel.
However, the target is Iran. With the Palestinian issue solved, and Israel triumphant, the way will be cleared for a US-Israeli crusade against Iran.
On the very day that Trump signed his declaration on the Golan, Israel stepped up its murderous assault on Gaza, firing over 70 rockets into the strip and instructed Palestinians they must not demonstrate for the right of return or risk being shot down.
Trump’s declaration is opening the way for a massive explosion in the region with Israel now being given the green light to invade any other country and claim it as it own territory, and by extension it gives a precedent for the US to invade and colonise countries like Venezuela that are deemed to pose a ‘security threat’ to US imperialism.
The only way to put an end to imperialism’s drive to war and the re-colonisation of the world is for the working class to put an end to imperialism itself through the victory of the world socialist revolution.
Only this will guarantee peace and establish the rights of the Palestinian people to their own independent state and restore the Golan Heights to its rightful owner, Syria. Workers in the UK and the USA must recognise that their enemy is at home, and it is their own ruling classes.
They must support the Arab peoples with socialist revolutions that destroy imperialism in its main lairs, and show the real unity in action and power of the Arab masses and the workers of Europe and the USA!