Word: golan
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Israel extends its law to the Golan Heights...
...still recovering from a three-week-old hip fracture, suddenly emerged from his hospital bed early last week to appear in a wheelchair in the Knesset. There he brusquely announced that his government would make into law what Israel has long accomplished in fact: the takeover of the strategic Golan Heights, 444 sq. mi. of rocky terrain captured from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967. Said Begin: "We are talking about our very lives and our future, and the welfare of this nation...
There is no denying the strategic importance of the Golan Heights to Israel or, for that matter, to Syria (see map). Rising to 7,297 ft. above sea level, the heights overlook the fertile Galilee Valley, one of the country's principal breadbaskets. On the Syrian side, they merge into a level plateau-ideal tank country-that stretches 50 miles to Damascus. In 1967 the Syrians used the heights to rain fire on the Israelis at the onset of the Six-Day War. Since Jerusalem's military occupation of the heights, some 6,000 Israelis in 31 settlements...
...Geula Cohen. But in December 1980, Begin's Cabinet voted 15 to 2 against promoting the measure for fear of adverse world reaction. After the Prime Minister's cliffhanging election victory of last June, however, the Cabinet's mood began to change in a hawkish direction. Golan annexation had been one of the planks in Begin's election campaign, and, to fashion his two-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, Begin included in his coalition right-wing and religious nationalist elements that could be expected to lobby strongly for such action. Begin was finally provoked...
...Israel's withdrawal from all Arab territories that it occupied after the 1967 war. This territory includes the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and, most important, the West Bank of the Jordan River and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as their own. The Israelis have said that they would give up some of the land if they could be assured defensible borders, but they are adamant about retaining all of Jerusalem. The hard-line Palestinians claim that they would not relinquish a square inch to the Israelis. But there is room for discussion on this point...