Another brazen request

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the boldness to ask US President Donald Trump to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, while on his recent visit to Washington.

Netanyahu raised the issue of the plateau, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981, hoping that the unpredictable US president might recognise such illegal “sovereignty”.

The coveted strategic heights are home to some 25,000 Israeli settlers and about 20,000 Syrian Druze. 

Netanyahu, whose persistence seems to be one forte, had made a similar request from the Obama administration in 2015, but was rightfully refused.

Now, it seems, the Israeli prime minister was hoping that his chumming up to Trump will bear fruit; it may have been a test of the extent to which the friendship and declared undying support of the US administration goes.

Well, the most he could get, according to his “facts”, was that the president was not “surprised by my request”.

Knowing Netanyahu, few would be surprised by anything he says or does, but knowing the international law puts things into perspective.

True, the Trump administration was warm to the visiting premier and conceded that the prospect of the two-state solution for the conflict Israel has with the Palestinians could be over, but did not yield to the demand to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Neither, it would seem, is Trump willing to grant Israel sovereignty over a territory that was illegally annexed and that belongs to Syria.

The White House, it is hoped, will realise that such a move would antagonise Syria, which is supported by Russia, and Iran, in its war with an assorted array of terrorists, and that would undermine Trump’s promise of working closer with Russia to stop the war in Syria.

Of course, Syria would not be the only one angered by such heedless recognition, but Israel does not care, too smug in the American embrace.

It may be, hopefully, that Trump, unlike his predecessor, will assert his brawn and not cave in to Netanyahu’s brazen dictates. That he will draw a clear line between what is possible and what is not.