Martin Indyk
14 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
with its explicit prohibition on the acqui-
sition o territory by force, which made
clear that the Golan Heights was Syrian
sovereign territory. Nevertheless, that £
resolution, which Greenblatt was so keen
to disparage before the £ Security
Council, allowed Israel to retain posses-
sion o the Golan Heights until a Änal
peace agreement was reached. That is
why Israel never annexed the territory,
even though it considers it strategically
crucial, maintains settlements there, and
even has established vineyards and a
robust tourism industry in the area.
(Instead o claiming sovereignty, in a con-
troversial decision in 1981, Prime Minis-
ter Menachem Begin extended Israeli law
to the Golan, for which Israel was con-
demned by the £ Security Council, with
the United States voting in favor.)
Israel and Syria managed to keep their
deal going for generations, even uphold-
ing it as the latter descended into civil
war and anarchy. When Netanyahu asked
for Russia’s help in keeping Iranian-
backed militias out o the Golan Heights
in July 2018, he explicitly invoked the
disengagement agreement, as did Putin
in his press conference with Trump at
their ill-fated Helsinki summit that same
month. But that was all before Netanyahu
sought Trump’s help in his latest reelec-
tion bid. In what Trump subsequently
referred to as a “quickie” brieÄng, he was
asked on Netanyahu’s behal by Kushner
and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassa-
dor to Israel, to recognize Israeli sover-
eignty over the Golan Heights (without
even informing Pompeo, who happened
to be visiting Israel at the time).
Trump was quick to agree. “I went,
‘bing!’—it was done,” he later told the
Republican Jewish Coalition at its
annual meeting in Las Vegas. And so ingained only Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s qualiÄed acquiescence in Israeli
airstrikes on Iranian targets. The Israeli
prime minister had hoped to use U.S.
pressure and promises o sanctions relie
to persuade Russia to press Iran to leave
Syria, but that plan didn’t pan out either.
This past June, Netanyahu invited the top
U.S. and Russian national security advis-
ers to Jerusalem to discuss joint action
against Tehran. There, the Russian poured
cold water on the plan, explaining publicly
that Russia and Iran were cooperating on
counterterrorism issues, that Iran’s inter-
ests in Syria needed to be acknowledged,
and that Israeli airstrikes on Iranian assets
in Syria were “undesirable.”
Netanyahu was so alarmed by
Trump’s surprise announcement that he
would withdraw residual U.S. troops
from eastern Syria, where they were
helping prevent Iran from establishing
a land bridge from Iraq to Lebanon,
that he had to plead with the White
House to delay the withdrawal. But this
stopgap measure has done nothing to
remove Iran’s Syrian strongholds, and
hundreds o Israeli strikes on Iranian
positions have only increased the risk
that the conÁict will spread to Iraq and
Lebanon and escalate to a full-scale war
between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel’s border with Syria had been
quiet for almost four decades after
Kissinger negotiated the Israeli-Syrian
disengagement agreement in 1974. The
agreement included a carefully negoti-
ated side deal between the United States
and Syria that committed the Assad
regime to preventing terrorists from
operating against Israel from the
Syrian side o the Golan Heights. The
disengagement agreement was based on
£ Security Council Resolution 242,