Word: golan
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...Middle East last week, but for once Henry Kissinger was not involved. This time it was United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who flew back and forth between Jerusalem and Damascus in a last-ditch effort to extend the mandate of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights. At week's end, after exhaustive deliberations in the U.N. Security Council, Syria reluctantly agreed to extend the mandate...
...read a warning in the dining hall of an Israeli kibbutz on the Golan Heights last week. That was a reference to Nov. 30, the day on which the third six-month mandate for the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force posted between Syrian and Israeli troops on the Heights is due to expire. Unfortunately, one Golan settlement was not secure enough. One night last week Arab gunmen infiltrated a kibbutz called Ramat Magshimim (Hill of the Achievers), which had a population of 200 Orthodox Jewish settlers. The Arabs killed three students and wounded two others before escaping across the Syrian frontier...
...Ramat Magshimim focused new attention on Israel's most perilous frontier. The Heights are a very different proposition from the Sinai peninsula, where Secretary of State Kissinger was able earlier this year to work out a second disengagement accord between Israel and Egypt. For one thing, the Golan is a much smaller area−444 sq. mi., compared with 23,622 sq. mi. for the Sinai. For another, the Heights are not barren desert but an area of green, undulating hills with considerable strategic value. Although some military people say jets and missiles make this kind of thinking obsolete...
Vocal Hawks. If anything, the Syrians are even more adamant than the Egyptians in insisting that Israel must return all Arab lands seized during the Six-Day War. The diplomatic problem is that the Israelis have created on the Golan Heights what they euphemistically refer to as "new facts"−no fewer than 18 settlements containing 2,500 people, who have replaced the 70,000 Syrians who lived there prior to 1967. Since the region has ample water and long, sunny summers, the hard-working farmers have become prosperous. More significantly, since they occupy the sites from which Syrian bunkers...
...tons of cement from Rumania. In addition, Sadat figured in Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's decision to postpone his scheduled visit to the U.S. from November to December, or even later. Mainly, Rabin wishes to avoid U.S. pressure to negotiate an accord with Syria on the Golan Heights before the U.N. mandate expires on Nov. 30. But some observers believe that Rabin is increasingly aware of Sadat's dazzling TV smile and generally appealing public image. He would reportedly like to see that image fade a bit before making his own appearance...