NewsTracker Answers for week of Mar. 25, 2019

Q: In a Twitter message last week, President Donald Trump said “it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” about 460 square miles of land that Israeli forces seized during a 1967 war with its neighbors. Where is Israel?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Israelis took Golan's rocky highlands from which country on Israel’s northeast border?

A. Egypt

B. Jordan

C. Lebanon

D. Syria


D. Israel is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. In 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israel also seized the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. In a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Israel agreed to completely withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula.


Q: Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1980 but the United States and other nations did not recognize its sovereignty over the captured territory. What nation was hit by economic sanctions by the United States and its allies after it annexed another nation’s territory in 2014?

A. China

B. Iran

C. Russia

D. Zimbabwe


C. Masked Russian troops without insignia captured government and military sites in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in February 2014 and installed a pro-Russian government. Russia then annexed the territory in March 2014. The vast majority of nations did not recognize the annexation, and economic sanctions were imposed to punish the Russian action.


Q: In reaction to World War II, the charters of NATO and the UN embraced the principle that no nation can change international boundaries by force. Which nation used force to expand its territory before World War II?

A. Germany

B. Italy

C. Japan

D. All of the above


D. In the 1930s Japanese aggression against China, Italian aggression against Abyssinia, and German aggression against Austria and Czechoslovakia presaged the coming of World War II. As a result, U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill listed territorial integrity as their chief goal in the war.


Q: Have the United States, Britain and most of their allies ever used force to expand their territories?

A. Yes

B. No


A. Besides seizing the land of native Americans, the United States gained much of its territory in a war with Mexico. Britain once conquered lands around the world to establish the largest empire in history. Other nations used force to acquire colonies or take land from their neighbors.