THE PERMANENCE PARADOX: PROLONGED OCCUPATION, AND SUSPENDED SOVEREIGNTY IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS

Abstract

A territory can be occupied for decades, condemned by the world, and still never returned, and international law has no answer for that. The law prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. Israel acquired the Golan Heights by force in 1967, annexed it in 1981, and expanded it in 2024. The law has not changed. The territory has not moved. Something, clearly, is broken. The Golan Heights case, involving disputes between Israel and Syria, represents one of the longest-standing cases under international law. Israel has occupied the region since the Six-Day War in 1967 and extended its occupation of the area once again in December 2024 in view of the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. The Golan Heights case is located precisely at the interface between the aspirational qualities of international law and the harsher realities of geopolitics. In this paper, we contend that despite the continued demise of the state sovereignty of Syria, the Golan Heights will remain a piece of territory that is internationally classified as Syrian territory and subject to the Israeli occupation. This analysis implies that there remains a mounting contradiction between the rules of international law and the practicalities of geopolitics, and an interesting question that arises out of this is whether international law can regulate the issue of protracted occupation. This paper also covers arguments on the human dimension of occupation, especially the citizenship and identity crisis that the Druze population of the Golan faces. The paper underlines the phenomenon by which prolonged occupation, though never expressly converting into sovereignty under international law, gradually acquires the functional character of sovereignty in practice. It terms that phenomenon as ‘permanence paradox’. We have further tried to situate the Golan Heights dispute within the broader structural transformation of the international order, where the Westphalian logic of territorial boundaries is increasingly challenged by the power-assertive behaviour of dominance-seeking regional states. In such an environment, the concept of nation-state appears so futile and no state, especially militarily vulnerable, can rely on boundaries to define itself. Despite numerous General Assembly and Security Council resolutions affirming the illegality of the occupation, and despite near-universal international consensus, with the exception of the US, the Golan Heights remains occupied Syrian territory.