Word: quneitra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that the island was being used by the P.L.O. as a training base for sea assaults. The next day brought cause for celebration, however. Israel and Syria exchanged prisoners of war for the first time in a decade. In a tear-soaked ceremony in the Golan Heights town of Quneitra, Israel released 291 soldiers captured during the invasion of Lebanon, along with 20 Arabs who had been arrested for protesting the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. Syria gave up three Israeli soldiers caught during the invasion and three security agents seized in May after they drove into a Syrian...
...painting depicting the conquest of the last Crusader strongholds by Arab armies. The symbolism was plain enough; Assad frequently pointed out that Israel, sooner or later, would suffer the same fate. On this visit, when I presented the Israeli proposal to him, he said: "They are not giving back Quneitra. They have just split Quneitra...
...crisis Israel behaved with stoic endurance. Golda, who had bitterly fought every concession, sent Dinitz to my suite to reaffirm her deep commitment to the success of the negotiations. She knew I was frustrated by the endless Talmudic quibbling by which the Syrian recovery of Quneitra was being established in increments of 100 meters. Her gesture toward peace while she was anguishing about the children was more meaningful to me than all the rhetoric of the previous weeks...
...Dinitz told me that Israel had clung to the hills behind Quneitra not out of a sense of strength but out of insecurity. The demarcation line on the Golan had been established where it was in 1967 precisely because it was the most easily defensible position?in some spots the sole defensible one. I told Dinitz that if and when the negotiations resumed, Israel had to show more understanding of Syrian pride. It had to widen the Syrian territory around Quneitra; it must, within the limits of its security, attempt an act of grace. I in turn would...
Kissinger decided the time had come for him to make an "American proposal" to both sides, as he had done in the Egyptian negotiation in January. He suggested further Israeli withdrawals west of Quneitra and continued Israeli control of the hills, but with limited arms. When the Israelis agreed to a ban on weapons that could fire from the hills directly into Quneitra, Assad accepted. Now Kissinger pressed both sides to wrap