NEW DELHI: India was among the 91 nations at the UN General Assembly to vote in favour of a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from all occupied Syrian Golan to the line of June 4, 1967, in compliance with several earlier UNSC resolutions.
The draft resolution called ‘The Syrian Golan’ was introduced by Egypt. It was adopted as 91 member nations voted in favour, eight against and 62 abstained.
Only the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, the UK, and three tiny islands that are essentially American protectorates voted against the resolution.
The Golan Heights, which belongs to Syria since 1944, were seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981, the Israeli parliament passed a law unilaterally declaring sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The UN Security Council declared the annexation null and void in its Resolution 497 on December 17, 1981.
The document contains eight provisions. The first one states that Israel has so far failed to implement the 1981 UN Security Council Resolution 497, which declares the Israeli annexation null and void. Apart from that, the document “demands once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of June 4, 1967, in implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions”.
It also said “the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and its de facto annexation constitute a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region”.
Opening a day-long meeting on the question of Palestine, General Assembly president Dennis Francis warned that the longer the fear, distrust, appetite for revenge, hatred and anxiety fester and further deepen, the more lethal the psychological chasm grows, and the darker the shadow it will cast over generations to come.