The Wrong Way Home: Israeli soldiers have been occupying Syria's Golan Heights since 1967 even though the area's strategic importance is non-existent and Israel stands to lose far more than gain from continued occupation. Most Israeli politicians and military leaders know this. The question has always been: which one is willing to act? (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)
If Israel wants peace with Syria, the solution is neither elusive nor complicated. It's a matter of 460 square miles (an area the size of Los Angeles), the 460 square miles of Syria's Golan Heights that Israel invaded in 1967, during the Six Day War, and has occupied since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the region, an annexation the United Nations quickly declared "null and void." That hasn't stopped Israel from streaming in illegal settlers, about 15,000 so far.
Israel has held on to the Golan officially because of security reasons. But there may be another motivation altogether, just as there was when Israel tried to hold on to portions of South Lebanon for two decades before discovering that the human cost wasn't worth it: both South Lebanon and the Golan are rich in farm land and water, two commodities dear to northern Israelis, and scarce there.
This isn't speculation. Moshe Dayan, Israel's defense minister during the Six Day War, cast doubt on the commonly held belief that Israel was holding on to the Golan for security reasons a few years before his death. As The New York Times reported in 1997, Daya, in conversations with a young reporter five years before his death in 1981, "Dayan said he regretted not having stuck to his initial opposition to storming the Golan Heights. There really was no pressing reason to do so, he said, because many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland. General Dayan did not mean the conversations as an interview, and the reporter, Rami Tal, kept his notes secret for 21 years -- until he was persuaded by a friend to make them public. They were authenticated by historians and by General Dayan's daughter Yael Dayan, a member of Parliament, and published ... in the weekend magazine of the newspaper Yediot Ahronot."
In 1999 and 2000 Israel and Syria talked peace in exchange for Israel returning the Golan. Talks failed when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak refused to give up the last 400 meters (1,200 feet) of land along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, even though the land belongs to Syria. It was both a symbolic and cynical move on Barak's part--one last attempted parting shot of Israeli arrogance. No wonder Syrian President Hafez el Assad, who died half-way through the talks, and his son Bashar, didn't bite.
Now Israelis and Syrians are talking again, supposedly with Barak in behind-the-scenes settings. As Haaretz, the Israeli daily, put it in a cogent editorial last week,
There seems to be a need to repeat, over and over, this basic fact: Nothing contributes to Israel's security more than a peace accord. Before the protests of solidarity with the Golan Heights begin, it should be emphasized that withdrawal from the Golan in exchange for peace is endorsed not only by bleeding hearts, but by distinctly security-minded figures. The supporters of the Golan are West Bank settlers, like Golan resident Effi Eitam, who see any withdrawal as a national catastrophe; parties that gain strength by sowing security-related fears, such as Israel Beiteinu; those with economic interests in the region, hikers, bird-watchers, wine connoisseurs and winemakers; and mainly the people of the past, who still consider the lookout point on Mount Hermon to be "Israel's eyes," even though those eyes did not prove a very effective source of warning in 1973. Today, neither advance warning nor deterrence rely on the "Alpinists" (the elite IDF unit trained for snow operations), and the missile war expected in the future is not affected by natural boundaries, whether of the flowing or the ascending kind.The editorial was titled "Don't Be Afraid of Peace With Syria." The problem remains that even for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party, those irrationally afraid of peace (or rather, irrationally afraid of those who oppose peace) outnumber those favoring it, no matter the endless good reasons to quit the Golan, and the few reasons, never convincing or legal, to stay.
For more background on the Golan, see my new Q&A, "What Is the Golan? What Are the Golan Heights?"
Comments
Very illuminating, and not just about the Golan. This kind of elementary information about the real situation and motives is basically unavailable in most mainstream journalistic outlets. Thanks, Mr. Tristam and about.com!
I believe many soldiers in Israel died while taking the Golan because it is such a crucial strategic point. It is not simple just giving it up for “peace” that’ll last a week or two. Syria is no real threat to the world, Iran is. Land for peace doesn’t work, ask the Indians. Peace for peace works, those people in the mideast need to stop launching rockets into other countries, then there will be no other silly attacks. I think you misunderstand the entire situation. you may want to go to google news and see whats really going on there.
do you live in Disney Land?
There are consequences to losing wars (1948, 1967, 1973). Germany lost WW II and lost East Prussia and the Eastern parts of Germany. The Arabs want to return to pre-1967 borders in Palestine but that won’t occur either. It is time to be realistic and to make peace for future generations of Arabs and Jews.
Al, do you really want to compare Syria losing the Golan in ’67 to Nazi Germany losing land? And if it’s realism we’re interested in, let’s at least take Israel’s example: withdrawing from the Sinai, withdrawing from Lebanon, withdrawing from Gaza, in every case because Israel persisting in occupying those territories was more untenable primarily to Israel than it was to leave. It seems to me those who project feasible protracted Israeli occupations of Arab lands, including the West Bank and the Golan, live in Disneyland. Except that at Disneyland nobody gets hurt, as thousands daily are by occupation.
For those comments concerning future generations. You should go to the golan and meet some of those future generations. I picked up a few hichhikers. I have never met such racist fear ridden people (all settlers, didn’t meet any arabs, what has happened to them?) On kid especially who was probably about 14. These aren’t people for peace they are broken people who’d be better off in the sanctity of Israel propper.
I agree that it would be better to make peace, both sides are going to have to make concessions. I’d agree with Pierre the whole thing seems to be about water. The Dan spring being from what I understand the spark. Israel does not and should not have sole rights to the Galilee Sea. I think negotiated water rights would be better for everyone. Selfish consumption of that water will lead to more dead water systems. Shared rights should keep everyone aware of that consumption and hopefully the environmental impacts will be an issue that enters peoples awareness as well.
The road that leads to peace between Israel and Syria relative to the Golan Height is the 140 miles between Tel Aviv and Damascus; one that is frought with many dangers but one,like the road between between Cairo and Tel Aviv,that a former man of war and bold visionary for peace, Anwar Sadat, at the cost of his life, was willing to walk.
What did Sadat gain? The supreme hatred of his fellow Arabs and that which he could not win by war -Sinai. There were no diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt when Sadat made his bold trip in 1977 to talk with the Jewish people. Difficult negotiations then followed, at times almost to the point of failure but in the end they succeeded and as a reward for Sadat’s vision and boldness Sinai was returned to him and the Egyptian people.
As I see it Syria’s Bashir Assad is unwilling to follow Sadat’s bold example for peace with Israel. He is not willing to become, like Sadat, a martyr for peace. The Golan Heights can be his again but not as a precondition for talks. He must be bold enough to go to Israel as Sadat did, negotiate with Israel as Sadat did, return the body of executed Israeli spy Elie Cohen as part of the negotiations and sign a comprehensive peace accord with Israel. Until he is willing to do all of that, Israel must not relinquish one GRAIN of dust of the Golan they now hold.
There’s no comparison (so far, anyway) between Assad and Sadat, as there hasn’t been between just about any Arab leader and Sadat since his death. You get the impression from both Assads that they’ve been too obsessed with playing both sides as much and as far as possible, never wanting to wager an iota of risk, and always wondering, I think, what it would mean if the Golan wasreturned. What would Assad’s only true claim to legitimacy–hard-line opposition to Israel–be beyond that? Attention would focus back on his regime. The Golan is his pressure valve.
Jewish are cruel, its obvious, and they if U think deeply u will understand they have dangerous idea for future of middle est, but as Seyyed Hasan siad, they cant do anything, the powerof them will decrease day by day, and I can hear the beat of their bones. الیس الصبح بقریب!
The Golan Height’s strategic importance is non-existent…
Wow, don’t think I’ve ever started reading an article where someone’s credibility is blown so fast.
Adam, don’t take it from me. Take it from Moshe Dayan, the great warrior and conqueror and defense minister at the time of the 1967 war, who is quoted above and refers to his original opposition to storming the Golan. Here’s what he actually said in 1967, this on the second day of the war, arguing AGAINST taking the Golan precisely because its strategic importance was nil compared to the risks, then and subsequently, of taking it over. This is Dayan speaking, at a time when Israeli settlements were getting shelled by Syrian artillery:
“I prefer to move the settlements ten or twenty miles from the Syrian artillery rather than get caught up in a third front… Thousands of Arabs were relocated as a result of this war; we can relocate several dozen Israelis.”
The emphasis of course is mine, a small detail most Golan-as-destiny fans prefer to overlook: there were hardly more than a few dozen Israelis at risk of Syrian guns.
The other point you missed is that the Golan’s value, whatever it was at the time as a buffer between Syrian artillery and those dozen settlers, has been nullified since by missiles, as Hezbollah’s arsenal proved in the 2006 war. You wouldn’t be suggesting that Israel occupy Lebanon’s southern half all over again to nullify that, would you? The Israelis tried. It didn’t work. As offensive and hubristic strategies generally don’t.
Well written and to the point. It is too bad that Arab leaders who try like Sadat to reach out have to fear assassination. While I support the underdog at the same time I can understand the Ummah wanting to have homes and not live in camps that become breeding grounds for terrorism and hate.