On Golan annexation anniversary, People in the occupied Golan stress “our land is an integral part of Syria”

42 years have passed since the Israeli occupation issued the ill-famed decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan and impose its laws and mandate over it. 42 years have passed, but the people in the occupied Golan never felt despair, resisting the occupation’s attempts to impose its hegemony over their life and implement its settlement expansion schemes. The Golanese have kept steadfast in the face of the occupation’s hegemony and managed to foil its Judaization plans. Last June, they foiled the occupation’s attempt to establish wind turbines on their agricultural lands.

The belonging of the people in occupied Golan to their homeland, their adherence to their identity and their rejection of the Israeli occupation is firm and unshakable as the Golan will remain a Syrian Arab land and the occupation will inevitably end sooner or later. This is the national stance that is expressed daily by the people in occupied Golan to affirm their rejection of all the occupation’s decisions and to confirm their determination to continue with their struggle until the entire Golan is back to the homeland.

Golan annexation decision, issued on December 14, 1981, is part of the occupation’s continued acts of aggression on the Golan and the people there, which started with the beginning of the Israeli occupation in June 1967. These attacks were embodied by the escalation of settlement expansion, displacing the residents and razing the villages and towns and building settlements instead.

The void Israeli decision was met with widespread international rejection. Three days after the issuance of the decision, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution No. 497, which confirms the Syrian Arab identity of the Golan and which stresses that the occupation’s decision is null and void and has no legal effect. However, the Council’s decision remained a dead letter like hundreds of resolutions issued by the United Nation on “Israel’s” attacks and occupation of parts of the Arab lands, due to the support and protection of the United States and its Western allies for the occupation in the Security Council.

The people in occupied Golan confronted the occupation’s decision by clinging to their land, stressing their adherence to the National Document, which they issued on March 25, 1981, and which said that the Golan is part and parcel of Syria and the Syrian Arab nationality is the permanent nationality of the people there and that the land of the Golan is a sacred property of the Syrians that no one is allowed give up an inch of it.

Marking the anniversary of Golan annexation, the Golanese reiterate that they will never give up their Syrian Arab identity and their belonging to the homeland, Syria. They affirm that the Zionist occupation’s decision is null and void and the Golan will remain an integral part of Syria, despite the occupation’s feverish attempts to pass its plans, stressing their great confidence in the return of the entire Golan to Syria.

Syria always stresses that the occupied Golan is an integral part of its territory and that it is working to restore every inch of its soil by all available means guaranteed by international law, as it is an eternal right that is not subject to statute of limitations.

The United Nations General Assembly also annually adopts resolutions by a majority of member states demanding the Israeli occupation to withdraw completely from the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of June 4, 1967, and calling for implementing the relevant Security Council resolutions, most notably Resolution No. 497.  Most recent resolutions issued by the UN General Assembly on this issue was issued on the 28th of last November.

Hamda Mustafa