T

he Golan Heights is Israel’s version of America’s Wild West.

Captured from Syria in the 1967 war, the Golan remains sparsely populated, a land where cattle graze in the meadows beneath towering mountain plateaus. Danger lurks for hikers who venture off the beaten path into fields where the Syrian army laid thousands of land mines before the Six Day War.

About 20,000 pioneering Jews live there, and an equal number of Druze, whose loyalties jockey back and forth between Israel, their new home, and their Syrian brethren across the border.

The Golan is a minefield in more ways than one. Israel stands guard 24/7 against incursions by Iran and Hezbollah, who have established beachheads, with a wink and a nod from Russia, along the 40-mile border with Israel. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the seven-year civil war periodically threaten to stream across that border.

Sensing the time is ripe with President Trump in the White House, a rare consensus has emerged between Israel’s government and opposition parties who are lobbying the US to recognize Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan. The international community regards the Israeli Golan as occupied territory, like the West Bank.

The House of Representatives declined to vote in May on a non-binding resolution recognizing the Golan as part of Israel, but resolution sponsor Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is steadfast. DeSantis chairs the National Security Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and has scheduled a July 17 hearing on the Golan’s status.

Many international legal scholars oppose US recognition. Some posit that the US has not recognized territory captured by military means since World War II, and such a move would add to a growing trend of America reshaping its relationship with post-World War II norms, possibly prompting more international instability. Eugene Kontorovich, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University and director of the international law department at Jerusalem’s Kohelet Policy Forum, contends those scholars have short memories. He will testify to that effect before the subcommittee next week in Washington, D.C.

“America recognized Vietnam as being the sole country in the Vietnamese peninsula. How did that happen under international law if there used to be a South Vietnam that was taken over militarily by North Vietnam?” Kontorovich said in a telephone interview. “Not to mention the State Department has expressed openness and sympathy to leaving West Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, and Morocco got that by invading and conquering in 1975 and that wasn’t a defensive war, like the Six Day War.”

To support their position on the Golan, international law experts cite the October 1970 UN General Assembly Resolution 2625, which says: “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.”

Here too, Kontorovich finds a weak link in their arguments. “Based on my research, it is very hard to find clear recognition of such a norm in fighting a defensive war, so I can’t see this applying to Israel retroactively.”

The standards for Israel are always different, of course. Also, the Trump administration may be hesitant to grant Israel another unilateral prize following the May embassy move to Jerusalem, so as not to prejudice Arab reaction to its own upcoming framework on Arab-Israeli peace.

However, Kontorovich contends he sees no downside for the US if it were to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. “It’s easy to say the whole Arab world will be angry, but most of the Arab world is against the Iranian axis, of which Syria is part, and I think they would support anything that makes that axis weaker.” (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 718)