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Arab/Muslim States

Israel must appease Syria to avert war - IDF


By Stan Goodenough
July 12, 2007

The Israel Defense Forces believes that if war should erupt between Israel and Syria, it would be far more destructive than last summer's conflict with the Lebanese Hizb'allah.

"Ten times worse," according to sources quoted in The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

The recommendations of those making this assessment is that Israel must engage Syria in peace talks as soon as possible in order to avert such a war.

Israel's peacemaking history suggests the Jewish state will resort to appeasement to try mollify the aggressors in Damascus.

Syria demands - with the full support of the international community - that Israel hand over the Golan Heights if it wants to live in peace: The state of war with continue until the Jews relinquish the plateau.

Despite Israel's far superior claim to the land, all its recent leaders - at least some motivated by a sincere desire to make peace - have indicated a willingness to surrender the Golan.

The Golan Heights were included in the inheritance of the Israelite half-tribe of Manasseh, which settled them three-and-a-half millennia ago. At the time of Jesus, 2000 years ago, they were part of Roman-occupied Judea.

Their inhabitants revolted against Rome, which responded by killing and driving out the Jews.

In the second half of the 1800s and the first two decades of the 1900s, returning Jews purchased tracts of land and established communities on the Golan. Arab marauders and rioters killed some of them and drove the rest off their lands in 1920.

In 1967, Israel took the heights from Syria in a war of self defense. They have been under Israel's control for 40 years, and part of the sovereign State of Israel since 1981.

Syria held the heights for a mere 26 years from its independence until the Six Day War.

During that time, the Arabs used the Golan solely as a platform from which to shoot Jews in the Upper Galilee kibbutzim and on Lake Kinneret.

Israel's presence on the heights - from which the IDF can monitor events deep inside Syria - has helped keep that frontier the quietest of all Israel's borders.

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