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'Ha'am im HaGolan' The nation is with the Golan

“If a nation is ready to withdraw from settlements, be it for military or political considerations, it jeopardizes the its sovereignty; whereas a nation that consider the defense of existing settlements as its major military and political objective enhances its sovereignty.”- Shimon Peres, 1980

The release of 500 Arab prisoners as a “gesture of goodwill” is the kind of thing the world has come to expect from Israel every time an adversary agrees to have a conversation with her. The problem with that though is that Israel pays for the honor of “talking,” with the lives of her people. This has happened when prisoners who are released return to terrorism.

Israel wrestles with this problem often and she has to make hard choices. The dilemma she faces now, though is potentially more deadly and dangerous than just a prisoner release. Whenever one of Israel’s nemeses gets new leadership or if the old leaders are perceived to have a change of heart, the world calls on Israel to make another costly “gesture.” This time it’s Syria’s turn to be the recipient of an Israeli ‘gesture’ and the Golan is the thing that they want.

Syria’s current leadership hasn’t changed, not yet at least, but they are running as fast as they can, hoping they won’t have to. Syria’s impending withdrawal from Lebanon, a country they’ve virtually destroyed during 20+ years of brutal occupation, makes her very needy. Getting the Golan back would be a diversion for her people and would bolster this corrupt and vile regime’s standing in the Arab community. Characteristically, we can expect that the world will again join with Israel’s “everything-is-negotiable” left to make Israel do something contrary to her self-interest with Syria.

The person who said, “the appeasement strain never remains dormant for long among certain segments of JewsÖ.”(retired US Army Col. Irving Kett) was proven right again last week when Israel’s Foreign Ministry, a branch of the Israeli government that considers itself an independent contractor, opened talks with Syria about the Golan’s future. Every few years the Ministry gets an urge to give away something and the Golan always tops the list.

It’s not a coincidence that right after these talks came the inevitable article in the Israeli media promoting the idea. Uri Savir, former Counsel General of Israel in New York and one of the few people who still feels his role in the Oslo tragedy was worthwhile, wrote an opinion piece for the Jerusalem Post. Savir gives us the “bigger” picture: an Israel that truly needs a Syrian peace deal and the goodwill of the world that would flow from it even though Israel’s border with Syria is probably her quietest already. Syria’s border with Israel is quiet because Syria does all of her mischief elsewhere. The Lebanese border with Israel, which nominally is under Syrian control, is used by Hezbollah to attack Israel regularly.

An American leading light will be the next to promote a Golan giveaway in a New York Times Op Ed and will undoubtedly tell us that we ought to value peace more than high groundóalso not realizing that it’s holding the high ground that brings the peace.

Syrian claims to the Golan are based on her aspirations for a “Greater Syria,” but when the Jewish people have been sovereign in their own land, the Golan was always a part of that sovereignty.

Through the continuous waves of conquest that engulfed the land that is now Israel over the centuries, Jews always found their way back to that geographically critical region of their country. When the Jewish people finally returned to Israel to stay, instead of conquering the land, they bought much of it. So too, the Golan. In the late 1800’s Baron De Rothschild purchased land on the Golan from its Turkish and Arab owners passing title along to the Jewish National Fund for an as yet unborn State of Israel.

Modern Syria and Israel were both created out of the crucible of World War I. The League of Nations Mandate of 1922, an outgrowth of Lord Balfour’s 1917 declaration for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, included the Golan as part of its grant. In 1923, though, England and France did another deal, the Sykes-Picot treaty, which ceded the Golan to France’s Syrian Mandate. In 1944, the Golan passed to the newly created Syrian entity when France’s rule ended. That’s the Syrian claim for the Golan. In 1967, Syria forfeited their right to that territory when she joined the war to eliminate the state of Israel and lost. Syria had already risked her claim in the years before the war when she used the Golan as a platform for terrorizing Israeli farms and villages in the valleys under the Golan.

Unlike other parts of Israel, there is no large Arab population on the Golan to complicate Israel’s right to the land. The argument, “we are here and it is ours,” doesn’t work there. The 18,000 Druse who do live on the Golan and Mt. Hermon practice a different brand of Islam than their Arab cousins. Israelis and Druse get along fairly well, and the Druse participate in Israeli elections, sit in the parliament and also serve in the military.

Israel’s claim is historically, legally and morally superior to Syria’s and just as important she now possesses and populates the land. If that weren’t enough, there are other very strong reasons for keeping the Golan as part of Israelóforemost is that the Golan is a strategic necessity.

Dovish claims that technology replaces the need for the mountain and plateau barriers the Golan provides just aren’t true. Former Air Force Colonel Yash Tsidoon-Chato who is an expert on the 1973 war, says, “If Israel is in full possession of the Golan, the chances of Syria actually launching (a) war are infinitely lower than if Israel returned the Golan to Syria which will then enjoy a crushing topographical, strategic, tactical and intelligence superiority.” Couldn’t be much clearer. In the 1980s, several hundred retired senior U.S. military officers, who had visited the Golan under the auspices of JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Strategic Affairs, echoed that statement and signed a full-page ad in the New York Times that said that very thing.

In the 1973 war, 772 Israelis died on the Golan and Israeli blood soaked the Golan in 1967 as well. Those costly payments along with the impeccable historical and legal claim to the land ought to be enough to foreclose talk of giving this valuable strategic property to a regime that only wishes Israel harm. The Israeli people know this and in 1994, in a national referendum, they voted to keep the Golan part of Israel, saying, “Ha’am im HaGolan,” “The nation is with the Golan.”

The people of Israel resisted the pressure to make a “gesture” then and should do so again today.

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