Word: golan
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...appear still on the table. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Netanyahu told both President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in meetings Thursday that "you must make it clear to Assad that he must think of other options -- the option of a total withdrawal from the Golan does not exist from our point of view." It probably won't be that easy. "Netanyahu knows he can't separate the pieces of the puzzle,? reports TIME?s Bill Stewart. ?Syria wages a guerrilla war on Israel through Hizbollah. So, Israel cannot have peace, or safely withdraw from southern...
...Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad or Amal. Likewise, Syria, whose military occupies much of Lebanon and pulls the strings of the Lebanese marionette government, has no interest in guaranteeing Israel's security. For Syria, the prospect of peace in Lebanon is a bargaining chip to be used in negotiations regarding the Golan Heights. Without the security zone, major cities in the north of Israel, such as Haifa and Safed, would be in range of rockets fired from Lebanon...
Still, right or wrong, the Israelis are convinced that Assad has a scheme in his head: to use special forces to grab and hold a small piece of the Golan Heights, creating a crisis that would compel the U.S. to intervene and restart negotiations, presumably resulting in Syria's recovery of the Golan. Because Assad understands well that his forces are inferior to Israel's, no one thinks he would provoke a full-scale war. But that might still be the result, were Israel to respond to a limited land grab, as it has threatened, with a disproportionately severe counterattack...
...planning and rehearsing their responses to a Syrian offensive. In addition to taking regular troops through their paces, as in the two major tank exercises held recently, commanders are perfecting plans to call up reserves, who make up the bulk of the military. In headquarters across the Golan Heights, the lights scarcely go out any more as officers work through the night...
Despite their noisy maneuvers on the Golan, the Israelis are not convinced that Assad has got the message about the consequences of any misadventure. Says an official: "It's not a question of what he does tomorrow or next month. The point is, there is no question that Assad is, step by step, preparing the military option very seriously...