Sharing With Palestinians Is a Moral Imperative; a Deal With Assad Isn’t

Theoretically at least, I am exactly the kind of Israeli who should be ecstatic about the upcoming peace talks with Syria. In Israel’s recent elections, I voted for Ehud Barak. I support the peace process with the Palestinians. And I am prepared to pay the emotional price of an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank biblical heartland.

Yet when Barak presents the Israeli electorate with his promised referendum on withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for a dubious peace with the Assad regime, I will vote no.

Sharing the land with the Palestinians is a moral imperative. Even if Israeli concessions on the West Bank don’t lead to peace--and we have ample reason to mistrust Yasser Arafat--a compelling argument still can be made that withdrawal will save Israeli society from the corruption of occupying another people.

But retaining the Golan poses no such dilemma. Most of the Golan’s population is cows. Among its fewer than 40,000 human inhabitants, about half are Jews; the other half are Druze, who are divided over whether their loyalties belong to Damascus or Jerusalem. No occupation of another people, no corruption of the Israeli soul. Just a handful of Druze villages and Israeli farms, a thriving Israeli town called Katzrin, a ski-lift and the best winery in Israel.

For better or worse, Arafat appears to represent the Palestinian nation. By contrast, Syrian dictator Hafez Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, barely represents his own relatives. Like any Mafia family, the Assads banish each other and sometimes shoot at each other. Assad’s brother, Rifat, has been living in exile since the mid-1980s, after trying to seize power when Hafez was recuperating from a heart attack. Assad’s younger son, Maher, recently shot his brother-in-law, Assef Chawkat, in a gun battle in the presidential palace.

I will consider withdrawing from the Golan on two conditions: that Syria ends its occupation of Lebanon and holds democratic elections. My only real guarantee of peace is a democratic Syria, or at least a Syria that acknowledges some basic democratic norms, like Jordan. Democracies don’t stage surprise attacks on each other.

The Golan contains 30% of Israel’s water sources. At the moment, the Middle East is undergoing one of its periodic droughts. The next war in this region may well be fought not over territory but water. I will not voluntarily cede a third of my water supply to my least-trustworthy enemy.

The most compelling reason for retaining the Golan, though, is security. As a former Army chief of staff, Barak insists that in an age of missiles, the Golan territory is no longer strategically valuable. Other Israeli military experts conclude the opposite. They cite the Gulf War to prove the continued strategic value of territory: Only when allied ground troops followed six weeks of bombings did the Iraqis surrender.

Between 1948 and 1967, the Syrians used their positions on the Golan to shell Israeli fishing boats and farmers below. A generation of children on kibbutzim along the Sea of Galilee grew up in air raid shelters. After the Six-Day War, when we climbed up the Golan as tourists and peeked into the abandoned Syrian bunkers at our clearly visible kibbutzim and towns, we were astonished at our own vulnerability. Many of us haven’t forgotten our resolve then never to allow ourselves to be exposed like that again. Bringing in U.N. peacekeeping forces is no substitute for the Israeli army. The Six-Day War, after all, began after Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered U.N. forces out of Sinai.

In the coming weeks, the psychological pressure on Israelis like me who reject a Golan withdrawal will intensify. We will be accused by our own government, to say nothing of world opinion, of blocking the emergence of a new Middle East. We will be warned that failure to make peace will result in war. I won’t be intimidated. If we reach the point where a referendum becomes necessary, Barak will be surprised to discover how many of his supporters draw their red line on the Golan.