The Golan Heights is named by Edward Said as territory still under Israeli military occupation in the continuing aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In this brief but consequential reference, it anchors his account of Orientalism in an unsettled political present: the region cannot be treated as an abstract object of knowledge when its histories and inhabitants remain subject to the force of occupation.

Political Setting

Said connects the Golan Heights to the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, alongside the Palestinian territories, which he says remain under Israeli military occupation. He presents that continuing condition as part of the setting for the political engagement that began for him after the war. The reference therefore places the Golan Heights within a conflict that persisted beyond the battle itself, shaping the terms of struggle and the ideas at stake for his generation of Arabs and Americans.

Territory and Representation

Said’s account resists treating the region as a stable, self-evident object that can simply be described and managed from outside. He argues that powerful institutions and forms of knowledge can impose a shape on the so-called Orient, simplifying its many histories and peoples into an image that serves external control. The Golan Heights is not separately described in detail, but its mention in the context of continuing occupation gives that argument a concrete political setting: representation and territorial power belong to the same unsettled history.

Historical Voices and Unequal Power

Said emphasizes that accounts of the region must be read in relation to the positions from which they are produced. In his comparison of Napoleon’s large-scale Description de l’Égypte with Abdal-Rahman al-Jabarti’s three-volume account of the French invasion from the perspective of the invaded, the apparent authority of an imperial record is set against the testimony of someone who bore the consequences of conquest. That contrast informs the significance of the Golan Heights reference: political realities cannot be detached from who has the power to define them, whose account is made authoritative, and whose experience is overlooked.

Significance in Said’s Argument

The Golan Heights serves as a concise marker of an ongoing political aftermath, not as a location whose geography or history Said elaborates independently. Its inclusion reinforces his distinction between careful study undertaken for understanding and knowledge produced as part of a campaign of domination. It also fits his insistence that history is made, revised, and sometimes distorted through silences and imposed forms. The territory’s continued occupation thus sharpens the book’s central concern with the relationship between knowledge, representation, and power, without reducing the region or its people to a fixed essence.