Perilous
Times
Obama's betrayal of Israel even worse that you thought
Posted: May 23, 2011
10:36 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
News From Israel
JERUSALEM – While President Obama last week outlined an Israeli
retreat as part of a deal with the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.
in recent weeks also quietly has been leading talks aimed at an
Israeli surrender of the strategic Golan Heights.
Dennis Ross, Obama's Middle East envoy, has exchanged messages the
past few weeks between Israel and the regime of Syrian President
Bashar Assad, according to informed Israeli and Arab officials.
The Israeli officials said that in the course of the discussions,
the U.S. concluded Syria is in possession of a chemical weapons
arsenal. The officials said the weapons were taken into
consideration by the U.S. in its assessment of Assad's regime.
"It was part of the equation that led the White House to conclude
that Assad should stay in power," said one Israeli official.
Informed Arab officials, meanwhile, said that Assad believes
previous negotiations with Israel could form the basis of a future
accord in which Israel would surrender the vast majority of the
Golan Heights.
Both Israeli and Arab officials said the Obama administration
believes it is in U.S. interests for Assad to remain in power. The
U.S. reasons that even though Assad is a partner of Iran and a
sponsor of Hamas, the alternative to his regime would likely be
Islamist radicals.
Assad has been threatened with uprisings in recent weeks. He has
been accused of ordering rampant human rights violations and mass
killings in attempting to suppress the rebellions.
The Israeli officials said that in recent discussions, the U.S.
belittled White House sanctions passed targeting Assad and top
Syrian officials, explaining the sanctions are more symbolic and
that the measures will not harm Assad in reality.
In a major address last week, Obama called for Israel to retreat
to the 1967 borders, meaning a Palestinian state in the Gaza
Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem while allowing
for some territorial swaps.
In his address, Obama supported the Arab revolutions across the
Middle East and North Africa and called for the ouster of
dictators and transitions to democracy.
On Sunday, Obama clarified that Israel could retain some of the
West Bank, telling a pro-Israel group negotiations based on 1967
borders would include mutually agreed swaps. He clarified that he
did not mean the exact borders that existed on June 4, 1967.
Meanwhile, with Assad's regime faltering, the White House has been
pushing Israel to surrender the Golan in an accord with Syria.
Syria twice used the Golan, which looks down on Israeli population
centers, to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.
Jewish Golan
News media accounts routinely billed the Golan as "undisputed
Syrian territory" until Israel "captured the region" in 1967. The
Golan, however, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer
than the 19 years it was within its rule, from 1948 to 1967.
Even when Syria shortly held the Golan, some of it was stolen from
Jews. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland on the Golan were
purchased by Jews as far back as the late 19th century. The Turks
of the Ottoman Empire kicked out some Jews around the turn of the
century.
But some of the Golan still was farmed by Jews until 1947, when
Syria first became an independent state. Just before that, the
territory was transferred back and forth between France, Britain
and even Turkey, before it became a part of the French Mandate of
Syria.
When the French Mandate ended in 1944, the Golan Heights became
part of the newly independent state of Syria, which quickly seized
land that was being worked by the Palestine Colonization
Association and the Jewish Colonization Association. A year later,
in 1948, Syria, along with other Arab countries, used the Golan to
attack Israel in a war to destroy the newly formed Jewish state.
The Golan, steeped in Jewish history, is connected to the Torah
and to the periods of the First and Second Jewish Temples. The
Golan Heights was referred to in the Torah as "Bashan." The word
"Golan" apparently was derived from the biblical city of "Golan in
Bashan."
The book of Joshua relates how the Golan was assigned to the tribe
of Manasseh. Later, during the time of the First Temple, King
Solomon appointed three ministers in the region, and the area
became contested between the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and
the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus.
The book of Kings relates how King Ahab of Israel defeated
Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near the present-day site of Kibbutz Afik
in the southern Golan, and the prophet Elisha foretold that King
Jehoash of Israel would defeat Ben-Hadad III of Damascus, also
near Kibbutz Afik.
The online Jewish Virtual Library has an account of how in the
late 6th and 5th centuries B.C., the Golan was settled by Jewish
exiles returning from Babylonia, or modern day Iraq. In the
mid-2nd century B.C., Judah Maccabee's grandnephew, the Hasmonean
King Alexander Jannai, added the Golan Heights to his kingdom.
The Golan hosted some of the most important houses of Torah study
in the years following the Second Temple's destruction and
subsequent Jewish exile; some of Judaism's most revered ancient
rabbis are buried in the territory. The remains of some 25
synagogues from the period between the Jewish revolt and the
Islamic conquest in 636 have been excavated. The Golan is also
dotted with ancient Jewish villages.