24 April 2020; MEMO: Syria’s representative to the UN, Dr Bashar Al-Jaafari, has reiterated the Arab Republic’s right to reclaim the occupied-Golan Heights, adding that regaining it up to the 4 June 1967 line is guaranteed by international law and remains a priority for the Syrian government. The territory was seized from Syria towards the end of the Six Day War and later officially annexed it in 1981.
“The UN, under pressure by some permanent members at Security Council, continues to fail to put its resolutions, relevant to ending the Israeli occupation of the Arab lands, into effect, particularly resolutions No. /242, 338 and 497/,” Al-Jaafari added in a speech to the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East via video.
State-run SANA news agency reported that the UN’s failure had encouraged some countries to disregard international law such as the move by the US Trump administration in recognising occupied Jerusalem as the sole capital of Israel and the occupation’s sovereignty over occupied Golan, which was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “historic”.
Al-Jaafari renewed Syria’s stance in condemning such proclamations by those with no political, moral or legal capacity to determine the fate of lands which are part and parcel of Syria and Palestine.
He also drew attention to continued Israeli aggression in the form of strikes on Syrian territories through Lebanese air space, maintaining that these attacks are a flagrant violation of relevant UN resolutions and the disengagement agreement of 1974.
Israel is concerned about the Syrian military’s accommodation of Lebanese Hezbollah to gain a presence in the Syrian controlled Golan Heights. One of the Hezbollah members who escaped a failed Israeli assassination strike on a vehicle near the Lebanese border was reported to be Mustafah Mughniyeh, son of the Hezbollah military chief, Imad Mughniyeh who was assassinated in 2008 in a joint Mossad-CIA operation. Mughniyeh, a senior commander himself, is allegedly working to establish a permanent military presence along the occupied Golan.
