Word: golan
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...over the decades have acquired so much significance that for both sides to utter them is to change history. Between Syria and Israel, the game turns on an after-you-Alphonse test of who will speak the key words first. Before Israel will agree to withdraw from the strategic Golan Heights it captured from Syria in 1967, Jerusalem must first hear "full peace" and "normal relations" from Syria. Before Syria will say those words, it wants to hear from Israel "complete withdrawal...
Such overtures may help ease tension between the two countries, but the linchpin to a lasting peace is the Golan Heights. Israel may be ready to negotiate handing back the strategic high ground to Syria, but the Israelis say, the final handover would have to be a prize at the end of cementing a peace treaty and normal relations between Jerusalem and Damascus. In return, what Syria wants has to come from the U.S.: American troops to guarantee demilitarization of the Golan, and acceptance by the Western community of nations...
Cairo -- Syrian President Hafez Assad has been refusing to negotiate the transfer of the Golan Heights from Israel to Syria until the U.N. lifts sanctions against Iraq. Saddam Hussein is Assad's sworn enemy, but Assad feels a growing isolation from his neighbors -- Iran, Turkey and Iraq -- and so is doing Iraq this favor. The Clinton Administration wants a Syrian-Israeli agreement on the Golan by the end of this year, and has initiated secret talks with Iraqi officials at the U.N. aimed at lifting the sanctions...
Syria is a harder case. President Hafez Assad is not eager to be seen as following Arafat's lead, and he believes the P.L.O.'s settling for a staged autonomy threatens his own ambition for a one-step return of the Golan Heights to Syrian control. Washington will have to stroke Assad, knowing that Israel needs time to digest the latest events before ceding territory to Syria, no matter the peace that would be its price. In Clinton's favor is the fact that Assad can no longer count on Moscow to support his pan-Arab dream and Syria...
Twice in my life, in 1967 and again in 1973, I saw the face of war as a reservist soldier, first in Sinai and then in the Golan Heights. That experience turned me into a peace activist, but not into a pacifist ready to turn the other cheek to an enemy. If anyone tries to take my life or the life of my people, I will fight. I will fight if anyone tries to enslave us, but nothing short of the defense of life and freedom could make me take up arms. "National interest," "ancestral rights" and an extra bedroom...