Donald Trump is right about Israel and the Golan Heights

Earlier this week President Trump made one of the most reasonable decisions of his Presidency. His administration formally recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Inevitably the move has been welcomed in Israel, condemned in Europe and generally shrugged over in the Middle East.

Of course various people have come up with their own explanations for why Trump made this decision. In the New York Times Thomas Friedman claims that Trump has done it only because he wishes ‘to get more campaign donations from far-right Jewish mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.’ I don’t know how Friedman knows this, nor how he has achieved such mega-access to the President’s head. My own guess is that Friedman just made it up. But whatever Trump’s short-term motives are or are not, the move is nothing more than a long-term recognition of reality.

Naturally this is a reality that continues to be denied in many august institutions, including the Foreign Office in London. But it remains a reality nonetheless. Just as Israel has no desire to hold onto the Gaza Strip, and just as the West Bank remains genuinely disputed and a matter for painful border negotiations for many years to come, the status of the Golan is indisputable.

Strategically the position is impossible for Israel to give up. I was driving around the Golan again last month, and had the usual sobering moment at the Quneitra crossing from which you can look out over the plains of Syria. The Israelis seized this high ground in 1967 after their neighbours, including Syria, launched a war of aggression against the Jewish state. Normally in warfare if one side launches an aggressive war which it subsequently loses then the aggressor cannot simply demand that everyone pretend the aggression didn’t happen and return to the status-quo-ante.