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March 10, 2000/3 Adar II 5760, Vol. 52, No.27
Down from the heights
Golan settlement may help jump start Palestinian peace
RALPH SELIGER
Special to Jewish News
Once again, the peace process has proved to be long on process and short on peace. For the third or fourth time, Syria's President Hafez Assad has found a way to reject Israel's offer to withdraw from the Golan Heights.
The latest round of bloodshed in Lebanon is not necessarily Assad's doing (he does not fully control Hezbollah), but the anti-Semitic tirade about the Holocaust in Syria's government-controlled press clearly is.
Assad has yet to prove that he understands what negotiations really are.
Insisting upon Israel's signed commitment to withdraw to the pre-June 1967 line before discussing all other aspects of the issue is at best a pressure tactic, at worst a propaganda ploy. And Israel is fully justified in pointing out that the 1967 line includes small but critical areas along the Sea of Galilee, which Syria took by force of arms in 1948. There is hard bargaining to be done about where the exact border should be marked, as well as the kind of security measures and economic and political relations that Syria should agree to in return for the Golan.
Likewise, it is legitimate to negotiate on the fate of the communities which Israelis have built on the Golan at the explicit behest of their government and, unlike in the West Bank, with the widespread support of most Israelis. As has been widely noted, the approximately 14,000 Israelis who have made the Golan their home are not the uncompromising hardliners who constitute a prominent element of the West Bank settler population.
For example, the Golan is the only area beyond the 1967 Green Line in which members of the left-wing and very dovish Kibbutz Artzi or National Kibbutz Federation (now merging with the United Kibbutz Movement) established new kibbutzim. Although these kibbutzniks have from the outset declared a willingness to leave their homes in return for a real peace with Syria, peace would only be strengthened if Israelis and their businesses were allowed to remain while acknowledging Syrian sovereignty. It is not clear that many would choose to remain under Syrian rule, but this concrete fact of Israeli-Syrian co- existence would greatly improve the new post-war climate and provide a significant boost to the stagnant Syrian economy.
There is no inherent reason why the highly successful Golan Heights Winery, for example, or the ski resort at Mt. Hermon, and the other enterprises of 24 factories and 28 kibbutzim and moshavim, could not benefit both Israelis and Syrians. Syria could derive benefit through taxation, rent payments, and through a spate of employment and investment opportunities for its people.
The notion of such cooperation may be a pipe dream; Syria has already stated its opposition, but any peace which would require total evacuation by Israel would be flawed and would be immeasurably more difficult to sell to the electorate in the promised referendum.
Barring a radical change in the nature of the Syrian state, the most compelling reason for Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria is to secure the Lebanese border. If Syria does not or cannot prevent violence along that border, there is no enormous incentive for Israel to give up a beautiful and productive region. The Israeli Knesset's recent vote to pull out of Lebanon by July makes clear to Syria that if violence continues from the Lebanese side, Israel will remain on the Golan indefinitely. Instead of Israel in effect being held hostage in Lebanon, the pressure is placed squarely on Syria.
An early withdrawal from Lebanon combined with a flexible but realistically hard line toward Syria might actually help progress toward a real peace with the Palestinians. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, unlike on the Golan, there are graphic reminders of the harshness of military rule.
Ending an Israeli presence in Gaza, not on the Golan, would relieve Israel of a heavy practical and moral burden. Whatever the final boundaries and dimensions of the new Palestinian state are in the process of becoming, it is important that the Palestinians have a significant contiguous swath of West Bank territory, not - as threatened today - as many as 70 island-cantons surrounded by Jewish settlements and by-pass roads.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak's announced goal of incorporating blocs of settlements within Israel proper is not unreasonable, but settlements should not make a mockery of the concept of Palestinian statehood. It is on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip that it is necessary for Israel's future peace to be secured by the evacuation of at least some Jewish towns and the withdrawal of Israeli rule. Israel's limited political capital to sacrifice for the sake of peace is more prudently expended vis-a-vis the Palestinians than the Syrians.
Ralph Seliger is board secretary and publications chair of Meretz USA. The opinions expressed in this article are his own.
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