Israel's terrorism and the invasion of the Golan Heights:
Golan Heights (October 2000)
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The Golan Heights: A History of Israeli Provocations and Expansion
The Israeli daily, Yediot Aharanot, in its Passover supplement of April 1997, published for the first time notes of a 1976 conversation between Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Defense Minister in 1967, and Rami Tal, now a senior editor at Yediot Aharanot. On May 2, 1997, the Boston Globe ran a story headlined, “Israel Took Golan Out of Greed, Dayan Says: Ex-Defense Chief Describes Tactics of a Land Grab.” The New York Times (May 11, 1997) was more neutral: “General’s Words Shed a New Light on the Golan.”
Dayan told Tal that Israeli farmers urged the Labor government to seize the Golan in 1967 primarily because they sought Golan farm land, not because of Syrian shells: “They did not even try to hide their lust for that soil. That is what guided them.” Dayan added that “eighty percent of the incidents” on the Syrian border resulted from Israeli provocations: “We would send tractors to plow in an area of little use, in a demilitarized zone . . . to advance until the Syrians would get aggravated and start shooting.” Israel responded with artillery and air power. Why? Israel was unhappy with the cease-fire lines and needed excuses to seize additional farm land.
None of these “revelations” are new. The memoirs of Western military officers who served with the UN Truce Supervision Organization and the Syrian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission make clear Israel’s responsibility for conflict on the Israeli-Syrian border. *
The Syrian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement (SIGAA) of 1949 created a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries. Despite the Agreement, Israel was found in violation of the accord by the UN Security Council in 1951, 1956, and 1962. The US, under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, voted yes on all three Security Council resolutions.
The Demilitarized Zone was declared neutral by the Armistice Agreement, presumably to give Israel the security she sought. Fred J. Khoury, professor of political science at Villanova University, described how Israel, after signing the Agreement, “. . . claimed sovereignty over the entire zone; seized control over the greater part of it; set up fortifications in it and sent in heavily armed frontier police, and heavy military equipment into it.” (Middle East International, October 1974) The UN and the US (including Ralph Bunche who helped write the SIGAA) protested that Israel had no right to assert sovereignty over or to fortify the zone.
In 1951, Khoury writes, “Israel began razing, despite UN objections, most of the Palestinian homes and other buildings” in several villages in the Demilitarized Zone, forcing hundreds of Palestinians to flee. Although the UN Security Council urged Israel to allow the refugees to return, “few were allowed to return permanently and no compensation was given for the destroyed Arab properties and the confiscated Arab lands.”
The Christian Science Monitor, in a March 4, 1960, editorial about one such village, Tawafik, observed:
. . . the Arab cultivation of lands adjoining the village of Tawafik was pushed back until the women and children of the village were evacuated across the Syrian border. Through Arab eyes, and apparently from the point of view of dispassionate UN observers, this looks like a gradual process of forcing Arab farmers out of the Demilitarized Zone and taking over the land for Israeli settlers . . . If Israel presses so relentlessly to establish sovereignty where the armistice left sovereignty undefined, is it any wonder that Arabs cry alarm at possible further Israeli aggrandizement?
Some refugees who fled ended up living on the mountain slopes of the Golan Heights, where they occasionally vented their anger and feelings of frustration by shooting at Israelis they saw working on their lands. In summarizing the causes for continuing tension, General E.L.M. Burns, Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization during this time, says:
The Israelis in fact exercised almost complete control over the major portion of the . . . zone through their frontier police in the area. This was directly contrary to article V of the General Armistice Agreement and the “authoritative interpretation” of it (by Ralph Bunche).
(Burns, Between Arab and Israeli, pp. 113-114)
Matatyahu Peled, a former Israeli general, wrote that “Over 50% of the border incidents [with Syria] before the Six Day War were the result of our [Israel’s] security policy of maximum settlement in the demilitarized areas.” (Ma’ariv, April 7, 1972) In 1967 Israel invaded and occupied the Golan Heights, justifying her actions by reference to this continuing tension and the need for security for its settlements. The action drove over 100,000 people, mostly Syrians, off of their land and created a new “security” zone. 18,000 of those expelled in 1967 were Palestinians, that is, people who have been expelled twice. During the 1973 war, Israel seized more of the Golan, and expelled another 23,000 people.
Since 1967 the media have largely ignored Israel’s violation of the human rights of the Druze Arabs living in the occupied Golan; the destruction by Israel of 100 Arab villages in the area; and her refusal to allow back over 123,000 refugees who fled in 1967 and 1973. Nor have the media reported the arguments of some Israelis that Israel could, under certain conditions, return the Golan without compromising her security, and that Jewish settlements in the Golan actually hindered Israel’s security during the 1973 war.
As an article in The Israeli Digest pointed out, “The Golan was needed as a buffer between Israel and Syria. Once communities were established there, it no longer acted as a buffer. The Golan itself then required a buffer.” (May 24, 1974)
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, in his analysis of security issues, concluded: “As for security, militarily defensible borders while desirable, cannot by themselves guarantee [Israel’s] future. Real peace with our neighbors—mutual trust and friendship—that is our only security.” (The Saturday Review, April 3, 1971)
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* General Odd Bull, War and Peace in the Middle East (London: Leo Cooper, 1973)
Lieutenant-General E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli (London: George G. Harrap and Co., 1962)
General Carl van Horn, Soldiering for Peace (New York: David McKay, 1967)
E.H. Hutchison, USNR, Violent Truce (New York: Devin-Adair, 1956)
An earlier version of the above appeared in the Palestine/Israel File, June 1997, published by SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel
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