An Israeli general’s statement that his country does not need to keep Syria’s Golan Heights under occupation should be seen strictly in the military context. It does not mean that Israel is ready to return the Golan Heights to Syria as the basis for a peace agreement or it has any intention to do so. All it might mean is a boasting by the Israeli military that it is capable of “defending” Israel without having military forces present on the Golan Heights.

Indeed, it signals a shift from the consistent Israeli contention that it was prompted to seize the Golan Heights in 1967 because the Syrians were using the Heights to shoot down at Israeli farmers and that the Jewish state needed to retain the Heights in order to ensure its security. However, it does not seem to have a political context at this juncture. Given that Syria possesses missiles capable of hitting almost everywhere in Israel, the “security” claim has always sounded hollow. Therefore, the latest statement is only an affirmation that retaining the Golan Heights is not central to Israeli security. That the hawkish prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, is holding back any comment on the remark by Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Yaalon indicates that Sharon would like the idea to be floated to drag out a Syrian response if only for theoretical purposes.

Sure enough, Syria has rebuffed the idea by insisting on definite Israeli action on the ground with a commitment to withdrawing completely from the Golan. Sharon, a military general who has also served as Israel’s minister of defense as well as of water, could not but be acutely aware of the importance of the Golan Heights for his country’s paranoia and preoccupation with securing water sources. Sharon knows only too well that the Golan is the source for more than 55 percent of Israel’s fresh water needs. Given the scarcity of water in the region, Israel would never give up the Golan. At best, it might be willing to make a face-saving compromise by returning part of the Golan but would never agree to return the whole of the strategic Heights, which overlook the See of Galilee in northern Israel (it is also known as Lake Tiberias and Israelis call it Lake of Kinneret.)

Securing water sources has been an Israeli priority since its founding in 1948 and it remains a preoccupation today; the per capita consumption of water in Israel is eight times that of the Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, which accounts for 18 percent of Israel’s needs of drinking water. In 1950, the then Israeli prime minister, Ben Gurion, declared that Jews were fighting a battle for water and that the Jewish existence in Palestine was contingent on the outcome of such a battle. Water from Syrian upstream sources flown down the Golan is accumulated at the Sea of Galilee before flowing further to the River Jordan and onto the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. Israel, which occupied the Golan in the 1967 war and unilaterally annexed in 1981, usually argues that since the Golan overlooks northern Israeli towns a withdrawal from the Heights would leave these towns vulnerable to Syrian missile and infantry attacks.

In what was a departure from that assertion, Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said in an interview published last week there was no military reason why Israel could not withdraw to its pre-1967 war border with Syria.” Yaalon told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot: “If you ask me, theoretically, if we can reach an agreement with Syria ... my answer is that from a military standpoint it is possible to reach an agreement by giving up the Golan Heights. The army is able to defend any border.”

Yaalon warned that Syria still represents a threat to Israel’s “security” and that the two counties could once again find themselves engaged in a war. “I can’t ignore the scenario in which an escalation on the Lebanese front leads to a confrontation between the two armies,” he said. Yaalon noted that Syria has “missiles that put all of Israel in range and chemical capabilities.”

Sharon has consistently opposed a withdrawal from the Syrian plateau. Sharon’s predecessor, Ehud Barak, offered to withdraw from parts of the Heights in 2000, but insisted on retaining some of the territory and American guarantees.

Syrian-Israeli peace talks were launched in 1991 in Madrid, but they collapsed in 2000, with Syrians insisting on a complete withdrawal from the Golan, and Israel seeking border adjustments near the Sea of Galilee. In the Syrian view, Israel will not relinquish the Golan, where some 20,000 Jewish settlers live, because it considers the Heights as a part of Israeli land. Furthermore, Israel believes its present borders should be recognized as such in any peace agreement. It will reject any plan which includes any relinquishment of any part of Israel’s land as opposing “the right” of the Jews in such land and jeopardizing Israel’s “security and existence.”

— P.V. Vivekanand is the editor of Sharjah-based Gulf Today.