Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN).

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) categorically rejects Donald Trump's executive order today recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. As always, the U.S. continues to act with impunity against the will of the Arab people and with clear disregard of international law. This comes two years and three months after the U.S. administration’s public recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Zionist entity.

Trump was sitting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he signed the order. Netanyahu’s reelection campaign (Israeli election day has been hastened to April 9) coincides with a new attack on Gaza; an uptick in home invasions, arrests, and expulsions in the West Bank; and an attempt to impose the U.S.’ imperialist will on Lebanon’s government, clearly the aim of Pompeo’s trip last week to Beirut.

It is also clear that Israel and the U.S. are attempting to consolidate their alliances with reactionary Arab regimes like those in the Gulf, and expedite their joint project of land invasion, resource extortion, and political domination of Arab territories. By colonizing and destabilizing Syria, Israel and the U.S. seek only to further their extractive and expansionist aims and erase any prospect of the Palestinian Right of Return.

This executive order is not only an infringement on Syria’s sovereignty, but also a violation of international law. Trump has chosen to ignore a half century of United Nations Security Council Resolutions—namely 242, 338, and 497—that declare the Israeli occupation illegitimate, and that call upon the Zionist entity to rescind its military presence and territorial claim of the land.

USPCN adamantly rejects Trump’s farcical declaration that the Golan Heights is part of Israel. We stand by our guiding principle of opposing the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, and will defy this Trump maneuver that, in the service of “Israel’s Sovereignty,” stomps on the sovereignty of Syria as well as the sovereignty of a free and liberated Palestine. We salute the brave Syrian people who continue to valiantly resist Israeli occupation.

Finally, we call upon all our members and allies to also publicly reject this flagrant defiance of international law and Arab self-determination.

Just as Jerusalem will always be Arab Palestinian, the Golan Heights will always be Arab Syrian!

USPCN National Coordinating Committee

Monday, March 25, 2019

#UnitedStates #Palestine #PeoplesStruggles #Syria #GolanHeights #USPalestinianCommunityNetwork #MiddleEast