Jerusalem Post: US: Golan Heights are not part of Israel/Netanyahu says Golan is Israel’s forever, what about the West Bank?

USA: Golan Heights are not part of Israel
Reuters, Ynetnews/Published: 04.19.16 / Israel News

US State Department spokesman, ‘territories are not part of Israel,’ Vice President Joe Biden says settlements leading Israel towards a ‘one-state reality.’Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Department Spokesperson, John Kirby, sought to clarify the US position on the status of the Golan Heights on Monday night which he said has been “longstanding and is unchanged.”Stressing his reluctance to “react to everything that’s said at cabinet meetings” or “to every bit of rhetoric,” Kirby declared, before a group of reporters at the State Department in Washington, that “Every administration on both sides of the aisle since 1967 has maintained that those territories are not part of Israel.” Kirby went on to say that the conditions under which the Golan Heights should be returned should be decided through negotiations between the respective parties. “And obviously, the current situation in Syria makes it difficult to continue those efforts at this time,” Kirby said. The comments came one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covened a goverment meeting on the Golan Heights and vowed that they “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.”Also on Monday, US Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged “overwhelming frustration” with the Israeli government and said the systemic expansion of Jewish settlements was moving Israel toward a dangerous “one-state reality” and in the wrong direction. Addressing J Street’s annual gala, Biden said despite disagreements with Israel over settlements or the Iran nuclear deal, the United States had an obligation to push Israel toward a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. “We have an overwhelming obligation, notwithstanding our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government, to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only ultimate solution, a two-state solution, while at the same time be an absolute guarantor of their security,” Biden said. Biden said his recent meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left him discouraged over the prospects for peace at present.
“There is at the moment no political will that I observed among Israelis or Palestinians to move forward with serious negotiations,” Biden said, “The trust that is necessary to take risks for peace is fractured on both sides.” He said both Palestinians and Israelis needed to tamp down rhetoric that fueled violence and actions that undermined confidence in negotiations.
Efforts by the Palestinian Authority to join the international criminal court were “only damaging moves that take us further from the path to peace,” he said. For Israel’s part, Biden said the “steady, systematic expansion” of Jewish settlements on occupied land wanted by the Palestinians moved “Israel in the wrong direction.””They are moving toward a one-state reality and that reality is dangerous,” Biden said, warning that moving in that direction would mean an endless cycle of conflict and retribution. Biden condemned the bombing of a bus and attack on another in Jerusalem on Monday by “misguided cowards” and offered prayers to the injured and their families. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry echoed Biden’s remarks, also addressing J Street’s gala. “We will continue to try to advance a two-state solution, the only solution, because anything else will not be Jewish, and it will not be democratic.”

Netanyahu says Golan is Israel’s forever, what about the West Bank?
Yonah Jeremy Bob/Jerusalem Post/April 19/16
As soon as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that the Golan Heights will remain part of Israel forever, voices on the Right, including within his own party, began encouraging him to make a similar declaration about the West Bank.Yet Netanyahu will never make such a declaration.
Why? According to international law, the statuses of the Golan Heights and of the West Bank are essentially identical. They are either disputed or occupied territories (depending on which side of the debate you are on) over which Israel took control in 1967, and are potentially part of negotiations to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel’s official position under international law has been consistent that it is prepared to return some, but not all, territories, such as the return of Sinai to Egypt, the withdrawal from Gaza, and Likud, Labor and Kadima prime ministers’ negotiations over the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
How much land would be returned, when and under what security conditions has been heavily in dispute as well as the status of east Jerusalem, and currently, very few political officials are discussing actually making any transfers. However, under Israeli domestic law, there has been a significant difference for some time. In 1981, Israel under prime minister Menachem Begin extended its law to the Golan. It went one step further with east Jerusalem, fully annexing it. It never took either action regarding the West Bank. At the time, Begin was believed to have made the controversial move regarding the Golan, but not the West Bank, not only on the basis of ideology, but also in light of Syria opposing negotiations with Israel even if the Palestinians eventually negotiated, to test peace with Egypt and to assuage settlers having to leave Sinai. Also, extending Israeli law to the Golan would not mean extending Israeli law to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as it would have in the West Bank. That means that since 1981, IDF military orders have governed the West Bank, while Israeli law has governed the Golan. That, along with the large number of Palestinians in the West Bank, has made the two areas’ interactions with Israeli society quite different. The Oslo Accords also are still functioning in the West Bank, implying some sort of territorial compromise, whereas no similar bilateral instrument has come into existence regarding the Golan. The ongoing Syrian civil war, the proximity of Islamic State to Israel’s borders and what many predict will be the break-up of Syria highlight the type of neighbor that borders the Golan, as opposed to Israel’s easterly and more orderly neighbor, Jordan. While several prime ministers, including Netanyahu in 1998 and 2010, made efforts to reach peace with Syria by relinquishing all or part of the Golan, there have been no similar efforts since 2011 and no one is even discussing it as a possibility with the civil war raging. In contrast, there have been multiple Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations since then and unrelenting international pressure to restart negotiations, even as the issue is temporarily off the domestic agenda in Israel as long as the so-called third intifada continues. So under international law, if Netanyahu is ready to declare the Golan to be part of Israel forever, legally there is no difference between the Golan and the West Bank. But the demographic, cultural, historical and current geopolitical differences are massive.
And so while Netanyahu may be prepared to take a new globally controversial stand on the international law status of the Golan, the chances he will do so regarding the West Bank are close to zero.