Israel uses settlements to hold Golan against Syria

Press, 24 April 1979, Page 20

Israel uses settlements to hold Golan against Syria

Bill Harris, of Christchurch, who recently completed a doctorate in geography at the University of Durham, England, has spent more than three years studying changes in the patterns of settlement which followed the 1967 ArabIsraeli war. Dr Harris, who speaks Hebrew and Arabic, interviewed hundreds of people in the territories occupied by Israel and in refugee camps in Jordan. In this, the first of a series of articles on outstanding issues between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Dr Harris discusses the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights.

The Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria on June 9 and 10, 1967, are of crucial strategic significance for both Israel and Syria.

The Golan Plateau, rising from about 300 metres above sea level in the vicinity of Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) to 1200 metres above sea level in the far north, and crowned by the western shoulder of the Hermon massif, dominates neighbouring parts of Israel, particularly important populations contained in the Hula Valley and the Tiberias Basin.

Israel, nursing deep suspicions of Syria’s longterm intentions, has been highly reluctant to compromise her present commanding position. Furthermore, Israel's leaders have been concerned about the headwaters of the Jordan River, the country’s most important single water source, much of which derives from the Golan slopes. It should be remembered that Syrian attempts to divert the Baniyas spring in the north of the Golan provided a major contribution to the tensions leading up to the June, 1967, war. On the other hand, the Golan watershed also offers downhill access to the Syrian heartland; Damascus, the capital, is only 50 kilometres from the present front line. Syria, not surprisingly, finds circumstances in which Israeli forward units are

almost within heavy artillery range of her capital unacceptable as a permanent solution.

The Golan, as currently controlled by Israel, covers 1150 square kilometres with a north-south length of 65 kilometres and an east-west dimension varying from 12 kilometres to 25 kilometres.

To the east it is bounded by a narrow United Nations buffer zone, established by the 1974 Disengagement Agreement just beyond the plateau’s watershed ridge of small volcanic hills. There has been a dramatic alteration in the territory’s population since the 1967 war when more than 90 per cent of the 95,000 Syrian residents fled to the neighbourhood of Damascus. By late 1967 the only

Syrian citizens remaining under Israeli rule were 6000 Druze in one block of villages in the far north, along with 400 Lebanese Alawites. (Their villages are shown on the accompanying map.) In the last 11 years the numbers of Druze and Alawite have grown to 11,000, while an entirely new Jewish settler structure comprising 27 sites containing 4300 people has been created. (These villages are also shown on the map.) Official Jewish colonisation of the Golan, beginning in late 1967, has so far advanced more rapidly than the settlement programmes in any other part of the occupied territories, excepting only the East Jerusalem urban estates.

There are two reasons for this. First, an Israeli Government consensus on the necessity of retaining the Golan for strategic reasons came earlier and was more broadly based than similar attitudes regarding other territories, colonisation being perceived as the best possible political anchor to such territory.

Second, the Golan, with ample rainfall, pockets of good soils, and almost entirely depopulated after the 1967 refugee exodus, is physically the most attractive region in the occupied areas for Jewish settlement. Agriculture and pastoralism served as the main initial base for establishment of communal and cooperative villages (kibbutzim and moshavim); but, although soundly based on the Golan’s natural resources, these activities could not support a Jewish population of more than a few thousand. This was considered inadequate to resist political pressures for withdrawal. Settlement based on natural resources also implied that the barren, stone-strewn central Golan had to be left largely empty, opening a 25 kilometre gap between settlement groups in the north and south. As a result, the last few years have seen a shift towards more industrial and urban settlement, especially in the centre of the heights. The main effort has gone towards establishing a regional urban centre, Qatzrin, where construction began in 1976 and which, with a population last month of 700, is becoming one of the most formidable colonistion projects in the occupied territories.

The 10,000 Druze. adherents to a highly secretive faith which broke with Islam in the tenth century, belong to a community spread through Lebanon, Syria and Israel, a community well known for its ability to adapt to new rulers. North Golan Druze villages, deriving their income in chief from apple orchards, have benefited considerably from incorporation into the relatively sophisticated Israeli economy; their lands, forming a single compact block, have been little affected by Jewish colonisation.

A real interest has thus

developed in spme quarters in continued Israeli control, the situation differing markedly from that prevailing in the occupied territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River further south. Contact between Golan Jewish settlers and the Druze has. however, always been minimal apart from some employment of Druze as construction workers and guards, and it should be noted that the villages retain a strong connection with Syria, through the Syrian Druze, alongside new ties with Israel, a duality which has periodically caused friction in the Druze relations with both powers. For the future, it is clear that continued Israeli colonisation of the Golan is incompatible with genuine peace negotiations with Syria, but this does not concern the many Israelis who regard peace with Syria as unattainable in any case. Although the Begin

Government’s pre-occupation with historical Jewish claims to Judea-Samaria has meant that the Golan has slipped out of the current limelight, and although Dayan and Weitzman have both hinted at the possibility of concessions if Syria was prepared to sign a document similar to the Israel-Egypt pact, the broad Israeli consensus in favour of indefinite retention of tne heights appears to be as solid as ever, a solidity reinforced by the growing settlement investment.

Against the background of the uncompromising rejectionism of the eastern Arab States, and the stormv outlook for the West Bank autonomy negotiations, this is merely further indication of the awesome immensity of the problems still awaiting solution after the IsraelEgypt peace treaty — testimony to the continuing intractibility of the multifaceted Arab Israeli conflict on Israel’s eastern front.