As UNHRC considers condemning Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, Netanyahu pushes the US for recognition of annexation.
By Tovah Lazaroff | The Jerusalem Post | Mar 14, 2019
The US wants to exonerate Israel from its indisputable human rights violations, while deliberately attempting to depict the racist policies and attitudes of the Israeli government as benign, despite the fact that they deny the Palestinian people’s humanity, nationality and narrative.
—PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi
The United Nations Human Rights Council is set to condemn Israel’s “occupation” of the Golan Heights next week in Geneva as it wraps up its month-long 40th session.
The resolution was submitted by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It recalled UN Security Council Resolution 497 from 1981, which rejected Israel’s annexation of the Golan.
Israel’s decision “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan was null and void and without international legal effect,” and the 1981 resolution “demanded that Israel rescind forthwith its decision,” the new resolution states.
It is one of five anti-Israel resolutions the UNHRC is set to debate on Monday and will vote on toward the end of the week.
The council annually condemns Israel’s annexation of the Golan, which it captured from Syria in 1967 during the Six Day War.
But this year’s vote comes in the midst of a renewed Israeli push to sway the United States to recognize that annexation. Political pundits have speculated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like US President Donald Trump to do so in advance of the April 9 election as a way of ensuring Netanyahu’s success at the ballot box.
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