Trump Recognizes Israeli Annexation of Golan Heights: Green Light for Global War

• Trump Recognizes Israeli Annexation of Golan Heights: Green Light for Global War
  by Bill Van Auken, https://www.wsws.org/
  The hastily completed White House ceremony in which President Donald Trump signed a decree granting official US recognition to Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights is an act which, on its surface, appears to change few facts on the ground in the Middle East. No one should underestimate, however, its far-reaching global implications.
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  In a brief proclamation, witnessed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump declared that “the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.”
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  He argued that Israel’s illegal seizure of the Golan Heights in 1967, its unilateral annexation of the territory 14 years later and its continued assertion of control along with the aggressive buildup of Jewish settlements and Israeli capitalist exploitation in the territory were all justified by “Israel’s need to protect itself from Syria and other regional threats,” including Iran.
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  What nonsense. Trump turns reality on its head. Israel has used the Golan Heights as a launching pad for its own relentless attacks on Syria, which have included the Israeli arming and support for Islamist militias, including ISIS, in the war for regime change against the government of Bashar al-Assad, as well as the thousands of air strikes which Israel’s own military chief of staff acknowledged earlier this year.
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  Washington’s recognition of “Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights” comes amid reports that the US military is consolidating its permanent occupation of eastern Syria, including the country’s main oil and gas-producing areas, even after Trump’s abortive announcement at the end of last year that he was going to “bring the troops home” from Syria. In recent weeks, there have been reports that some 1,000 troops—backed by larger numbers across the border in Iraq—will remain on Syrian soil, while the US military has been spotted trucking large quantities of arms and materiel into the US-occupied zone.
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  In other words, Trump is recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, even as Washington is occupying and effectively annexing Syrian territory east of the Euphrates River.
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  In short-range political terms, Trump’s action was unquestionably aimed at propping up his right-wing ally Netanyahu, who faces a raft of corruption charges and potential defeat at the polls on April 9 at the hands of a slate of generals assembled by the so-called Blue and White coalition headed by former chief of staff Benny Gantz.
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  Netanyahu, who is both Israel’s prime minister and defense minister, cut short his visit to Washington to return to Israel in order to be seen leading the vengeful onslaught against Gaza for the firing of a single missile that killed no one and for which both Hamas, which administers the occupied territory, and Islamic Jihad, its other major armed faction, have denied responsibility.
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  Israeli warplanes carried out bombing raids across the Gaza Strip, including in the densely populated Gaza City. In other acts of collective punishment, the Israeli occupation forces blocked the sole two existing crossing points into the impoverished territory, an effective open-air prison for 2 million Palestinians, and forcibly turned back Palestinian fishermen attempting to fish off the territory’s coast.
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