This is an excerpt of an article first published in the Jewish Ledger, March 7, 2005.

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

Israel wrestles with this problem often and she has to make hard choices. 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.
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.
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.
Unlike other parts of Israel, there is no large Arab population on the Golan to complicate Israel’s right to the land. 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 Druse participate in Israeli elections, sit in the parliament and 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 Israel–foremost 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 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 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.

–nrg

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