SYRIA'S CLAIM TO THE GOLAN HEIGHTS IS NOT A CLAIM OF RIGHT

Syria claims its negotiating position vis-a-vis Israel is based on clear title and on the prohibition in the UN Charter against acquisition of territory by force. The countries of the Arab world echo the same position in support. Neither is correct.

As to title, there are two pieces of territory which Syria claims which are in the possession of other nations. Apart from the Golan Heights, there is the Iskenderun enclave at the northwest corner of Syria, which is in Turkey. The histories of the two have a common origin: both were ceded to another country by the former Mandatory powers for imperialist reasons of their own, with no regard to needs or interests of the mandated territories which were entrusted to their tutelage.

When the Ottoman Empire was dismantled, after the First World War, the lands between Turkey and Arabia were created and delineated and Britain and France were given mandates by the League of Nations to govern them; France to govern Syria and Lebanon, Britain to govern Palestine (which also included what is now Jordan) and Iraq. Iskenderun was originally part of Syria and was ceded to Turkey by France, which the mandatory power in Syria, at the beginning of the Second World War. The Golan Heights were originally part of Palestine and were ceded to Syria by Britain, which governed Palestine, including the Golan, under a League of Nations mandate. Syria claims both territories.

It should be emphasized that Turkey did not acquire the Iskenderun enclave by force or by the threat of force. Turkey acquired Iskenderun in exactly the same way that Syria acquired the Golan: by unilateral act of the mandatory power for reasons of its own. Syria 's claim to the Golan is no better than Turkey's claim to Iskenderun but Syria claims them both.

If Syria's claim to the Golan were based on principle, Syria would relinquish its claim to Iskenderun. Syria does not do so because its claims are not based on right and not on principle recognized in International Law.

As to acquisition of territory by force, Syria's demand for Israeli withdrawal to the lines of June 4, 1967 denies that principle. The June 4, 1967 borders included in Syria land taken by Syria from Israel in the Israeli War of Independence, 1948-1949: the Banias, a strip along the upper Jordan River and the eastern shore of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Syrian claim to that strip of land is no better than Israel 's claim to the Golan.

In fact, Israel's claim to the Golan is better than Syria's claim to the land on the Israeli side of the international border. That strip of land was taken from Israel by Syria in a war of aggression, a classic case of acquisition of territory by force prohibited by the UN Charter. To vindicate that claim is to do violence to the UN Charter and to the principle of non-acquisition of territory by force which Syria and the Arab countries claim to uphold by demanding full Israeli withdrawal. Israel captured the Golan in a defensive war against aggression by Egypt, Syria and Jordan for the express purpose of perpetrating genocide against the Jews of Israel.

The UN Charter does not prohibit acquisition of territory by defensive war, as the Arab countries would have us believe. It prohibits acquisition of territory by war of aggression. That interpretation is unavoidable in view of the fact that there are numerous territories in the world which have been annexed by victims of aggression who ultimately prevailed over the aggressor.

One third of Germany was annexed unilaterally by Poland, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia after the Second World War. Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia were, furthermore, almost exclusively German in population and character for centuries. Germany eventually acceded to their loss as the price of peaceful relations with Eastern Europe. The Japanese northern islands (the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin Island) were annexed by the Soviet Union. Japan still makes some formal claim to them in a dispirited way, but there is no sympathy for the Japanese claim. Japan is expected to suffer that loss as the price of peace with Russia. Eastern Poland was taken by the Soviet Union after the war, on justification that it had been taken by Poland in a war of aggression in the 1920 's during the civil war in the Soviet Union.

After the Second World War, Czechoslovakia unilaterally re-annexed the Sudetenland, which it was pressured into ceding to Germany in 1938 by Britain and France, and which had been its only defensible border with Germany.

Syria lost the Golan as a result of a war of aggression, a war of genocide, as mentioned above, which was fomented by Syria and which had as its goal to "drive the Jews into the sea" and "turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood." Syria 's position is no better than that of Germany or Japan for the fact that Syria did not succeed in its goal.

For aggression, there is a penalty: the loss of territory, especially territory that served as a springboard of aggression. Any other rule would violate common sense and the universal behavior of states. No one thinks to demand that the Czech Republic return the Sudetenland to Germany, nor should anyone expect Israel to return its only defensible border with Syria, to serve again as a base for terrorism or a springboard for aggression against Israel.

Professor Yaakov Peretz Golbert, Advocate & Attorney

Efrat Israel

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The writer, formerly a professor of law in Los Angeles, California, is a practicing lawyer in Jerusalem and one of the founders of HASHKEM (www.hashkem.org).

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