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Israeli occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights illegal: Journalist

A picture taken from the occupied Golan Heights on September 10, 2016, shows smoke rising from the Syrian village of Jubata al-Khashab. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Catherine Shakdam, director of Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies from London.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Talk to us about the Israeli assaults on Syrian positions in the Golan Heights and in Qunaytirah in addition to recent reports which have basically reiterated claims from before that the Israeli regime has in fact been supporting and aiding the militant and terrorist groups in Syria.

Shakdam: Israel has aided terrorists in Syria because they want to see President Bashar al-Assad gone. The other matter at hand is that the Golan Heights doesn’t actually belong to Israel. The UN, in 1981, issued a resolution saying that Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights was illegal. Nothing has been done ever since. What Israel has done is keep to its policy of war crimes and standing outside international law, because it’s violating Syria’s sovereignty. Technically, the Golan Heights belong to Damascus, belong to Syria. I find it very interesting how systematically the right of the Syrian people and Syria as a nation state is being ignored. We are living in a kind of dystopian reality where Syria is not allowed to defend itself against terror organizations which the world came together to denounce.

Press TV: The Syrian foreign ministry also condemned the Israeli assaults on the Golan Heights in two letters that it handed over to the United Nations chief and the UN Security Council’s president; but in similar cases, with regards to Israel, such complaints are usually futile.

Shakdam: Syria is abiding by the rule of law, knowing that nothing is going to happen, but it needs to happen for people to maybe wake up and realize that the system is completely flawed and we need to rethink the entire system and try to see how we could restore international law. It is not even worth the papers written on those days. It’s not being used as a tool to protect countries as it was meant to. Syria has suffered tremendously under international law, at least how Western powers have attempted to interpreted international law.


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