Word: golan
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...Egyptians. Neither side had much to trade, especially since their armies were not stopped in exposed, vulnerable positions, as was the case in Egypt. The nature of the territory was also a factor: the vast Sinai desert is an obvious buffer zone, while the plain of Damascus and the Golan Heights are-or were before the fighting at least-populated regions with civilian settlements on both sides. Another difference: Egyptian and Israeli negotiators were willing to talk to each other, under U.N. auspices, at Kilometer 101; all the Syrian-Israeli negotiations had to be handled by Kissinger himself because Syria...
...Monday the Israelis took us to Quneitra, capital of the Golan. Before Israel captured it in the 1967 war, it was a town of 20,000 Syrians. Today Quneitra sits smashed to bits, lifeless, under the blazing Middle East sun. It is this desolate ruin that the Syrians so desperately want to recover and rebuild...
...hundred meters away, behind the crest of Bental, another of the hills, is Merom Golan, one of the 17 Israeli settlements in the Golan. Begun a month after the end of the Six-Day War, Merom Golan now has a population of 300, including 100 children. We passed homes under construction. Each house, finished or not, had its red-and-black-striped bomb shelter. When the war erupted last October, the settlement was evacuated. After four days the men returned to work the land. This year they will harvest the first fruits of the apple and plum trees...
...Syrian escort officer, a young lieutenant who spoke fluent English, explained that before the 1967 war, 150,000 Syrians had lived in the Golan. Today almost none do. (The Israelis insist that no more than 70,000 Syrians ever inhabited the area.) "It is our land," said the lieutenant. "It has never been their land. They lie when they say they need...
...Purple Line." Kissinger had persuaded the Israelis to extend to the Syrians what the Israelis described as their maximum concessions. They were willing to withdraw from most of the territory in Syria that they had captured last October, and even from some land on the Golan Heights west of the "purple line," as the post-'67 war boundary is colored on Israeli maps. The Israelis were also willing to give up much of the bomb-blasted Golan town of Quneitra and allow a limited number of Syrian refugees to return there. Their conditions for disengagement included a United Nations buffer...