by Jason Ditz
Speaking to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the Golan Heights “forever” part of Israel, irrespective of international law not recognizing it as Israeli territory. Netanyahu visits the Golan HeightsIsrael occupied the Golan Heights militarily in 1967, and started building settlements there almost immediately. In 1981, Israel formally annexed Golan, though this is not recognized internationally. Legally, the Golan Heights are part of Syria, occupied by Israel.
Since the annexation in 1981, Israeli officials have regularly denied publicly they’d be willing to give the territory up, though there were reports before the Syrian War that a deal had been broached on giving the Golan back to Syria as part of a broader peace deal.
Since then, Israel has started some lucrative oil projects in the Golan Heights, which further make returning the territory to Syria unlikely, though the lack of international endorsement for the annexation means this is a territory issue that’s going to be a recurring issue in the future.
In his first major foreign-policy speech as U.S. president, Joe Biden declared to the world that America was back. The international sigh of relief was almost audible amid hopes that former President Donald Trump’s disruptive style was a relic. Biden has pursued an ambitious agenda to repair alliances and forge new ones, curb corruption, arrest democratic backsliding, and tackle climate change, all while managing the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian threats to Ukraine, and escalating tensions with China. It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The decision to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the country’s government and chaos in Kabul as hundreds of thousands of people fled the Taliban. Plans to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, at the expense of Canberra’s submarine deal with Paris, soured trans-Atlantic relations. Ahead of the anniversary of Biden’s inauguration, Foreign Policy ’s Amy Mackinnon spoke with one of t
Dear Friends and Colleagues, I thought you would be interested in reading George's remarks he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this evening. Best regards, Michael Vachon George Soros Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland January 25, 2018 The current moment in history Good evening. It has become something of an annual Davos tradition for me to give an overview of the current state of the world. I was planning half an hour for my remarks and half an hour for questions, but my speech has turned out to be closer to an hour. I attribute this to the severity of the problems confronting us. After I’ve finished, I’ll open it up for your comments and questions. So prepare yourselves. *** I find the current moment in history rather painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Trump would
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