Appleyard I believe we had a discuss on this some months backs.I stressed that Golan would always remain Israel's forever.Well Bibi has proven that true.

As soon as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced on Sunday that the Golan Heights would remain part of Israel forever, voices started on the Right, including within his own party, to make a similar declaration about the West Bank. Yet Netanyahu will never make such a declaration.

Why? According to international law, the status of the Golan Heights and the West Bank are essentially identical. They are either disputed or occupied territories (depending on which side of the debate you are on) which Israel took control over in 1967 and are potentially part of negotiations to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Israel’s official position under international law has been consistent that it is prepared to return some, but not all, territories, such as the return of the Sinai to Egypt, the withdrawal from Gaza and Likud, Labor and Kadima prime ministers’ negotiations over the West Bank and the Golan Heights. How much land would be returned, when and under what security conditions has been heavily in dispute as well as the status of east Jerusalem, and currently, very few political officials are discussing actually making any transfers.

However, under Israeli domestic law, there has been a significant difference for some time. Since 1981, Israel under former prime minister Menachem Begin extended its law to the Golan. It went one step further with east Jerusalem, fully annexing it. It never took either action regarding the West Bank.

At the time, Begin was believed to have made the controversial move regarding the Golan, but not to the West Bank, not only on the basis of ideology, but also in light of Syria opposing negotiations with Israel even if the Palestinians eventually negotiated, to test peace with Egypt and to assuage settlers having to leave the Sinai.

Also, extending Israeli law to the Golan would not mean extending Israeli law to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, like it would have in the West Bank. That means that since 1981, IDF military orders have governed the West Bank, while Israeli law has governed the Golan.

That, along with the large number of Palestinians in the West Bank who are not in the Golan, has made the two areas’ interactions with Israeli society quite different. The Oslo Accords also are still functioning in the West Bank, implying some sort of territorial compromise, whereas no similar bilateral instrument has come into existence regarding the Golan.

The ongoing 2011 Syrian civil war, the proximity of Islamic State to Israel’s borders and what many predict will be the break-up of Syria have also distinguished the two areas.

While several Israeli prime ministers, including Netanyahu in 1998 and 2010, made efforts to reach peace with Syria by relinquishing all or part of the Golan, there have been no similar efforts since 2011 and no one is even discussing it as a possibility with the civil war raging.

In contrast, there have been multiple Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations since then and unrelenting international pressure to restart negotiations, even as the issue is temporarily off the domestic agenda in Israel as long as the "third intafada" continues.

So under international law, if Netanyahu is ready to declare the Golan to be part of Israel forever, legally there is no difference between the Golan and the West Bank.

But the demographic, cultural, historical and current geopolitical differences are massive. And so while Netanyahu may be prepared to take a new globally controversial stand on the international law status of the Golan, the chances he will do so regarding the West Bank are close to zero.

www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-Bibi-says-Golan-is-Israels-forever-what-about-the-West-Bank-451588

Waiting for American And European Union sanctions on Israel for this,
Oh i forgot, Israel is untouchable by the Eu and America,
It can claim Palestinian lands, it can claim Syrian territory, it can hold thousands of Palestinians in prison for years without trial, it can kill Palestinians for fun,
And what does the Usa do about it?, nothing,
The even give them aid worth billions of dollars yearly and sell them weapons,

Yet, the sanction Russia for annexing Crimea, a territory that was Russia's initially and even voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Russian Republic,

Seems the Usa has two set of laws, one in dealing with Russia, China and other countries and the other for Israel.

hungryboy:


It can claim Palestinian lands, it can claim Syrian territory, it can hold thousands of Palestinians in prison for years without trial, it can kill Palestinians for fun,
And what does the Usa do about it?, nothing,
The even give them aid worth billions of dollars yearly and sell them weapons,

Yet, the sanction Russia for annexing Crimea, a territory that was Russia's initially and even voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Russian Republic,

Ofcourse! Israel has, and will always hide under the cloak of religion to perpetrate evil never before seen by mankind, while Amerika looks the other way.

Afterall, they're only fulfilling Yahweh's prophecies as written in their Talmud.

A day will come when the unfinished business of Adolf Hitler against the jews will be revisited and we will rejoice as the jews are mowed down by machine guns & nuclear weapons.

That glorious day will come immediately after the fall of Amerika.

Just as a mango seed - once planted will potentially bear mango fruit, so too will a karmic seed potentially bear fruit in the nature of the action from which it was sown.

Israel & Amerika have sown blood and will inevitably reap blood.