Syria demands entire Golan Heights to start talks

TEL AVIV, Israel – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's attempts to negotiate with Syria collapsed today when Israel received a private message from Damascus that the Jewish state must first agree to relinquish the entire strategic Golan Heights as a starting point to commence talks, according to informed diplomatic sources speaking to WND.

Olmert is in Turkey today for a meeting with the country's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, to discuss Israel's indirect negotiations with Syria aimed at an Israeli retreat from part or most of the Golan. The mountainous territory looking down on Israeli population centers twice was used by Damascus to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.

Olmert said last week it's possible to negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and Syria, adding that such talks would require "tough sacrifices" – alluding to some sort of Israeli retreat from the Golan.

According to the informed diplomatic sources speaking to WND, Turkey passed a Syrian message to Olmert today requiring Israel to first pledge a complete retreat from the Golan Heights as a starting point for Israel-Syrian talks. Olmert refused to do so, the sources said.

"This round of talks failed," said one informed diplomatic source. "Olmert had serious intentions to reach something with the Syrians. He was rebuffed."

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The diplomatic sources said the European Union and France pledged to continue to push for direct Israeli-Syrian talks, with France offering to attempt to broker a meeting between Olmert and Assad. But the sources said the European efforts were not expected to yield substantial results.

Assad for his part said today he believes direct talks with Israel are possible and that they will eventually take place.

"It's natural that we would move, at a later stage, to direct negotiations. We cannot achieve peace through indirect talks only," Assad said, speaking at a joint press conference with visiting Croatian counterpart Stipe Mesic.

He was alluding to waiting for the continuation of talks until Olmert is replaced during new national elections here in February.

The frontrunner in those elections, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, today toured the Golan, where he pledged to retain the territory.

"We don't know what Olmert is going to agree on behind closed doors," said Netanyahu. "We are here to state unequivocally: A Likud-led government will stay on the Golan Heights and keep them as a strategic asset."

WND first reported in February Olmert's government had been holding high-level talks with Syria via Turkey regarding renewing negotiations over an Israeli retreat from the Golan Heights. In May, the offices of Olmert and Assad officially announced the indirect negotiations

Olmert wanted to open direct negotiations with Syria and favors fast-tracking talks to reach understandings on some key issues before he leaves office in February.

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Last month, Assad reportedly told a Lebanese columnist, Jihad al-Hazan, that Israel did not set any preconditions for the current round of talks. He said the Jewish state did not demand Damascus drop its ties with Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran.

The report is consistent with a top Syrian government source who told WND last May Olmert did not ask Syria to curb its relationship with Iran or its support of the Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist organizations as a condition for the talks.

The Syrian source claimed Israel agreed in principal to evacuate the Golan but that both sides see a complete withdrawal differently.

Syria wants a full retreat to what is known as the 1967 borders, referring to the year Israel captured the Golan after Damascus used the territory to attack the Jewish state during the Six Day War.

Israel sees a complete withdrawal as encompassing what is known as the 1947 lines, a difference of a few crucial meters that would give Israel the high ground on key water sources that supply the Jewish state with much of its water.

The top Syrian source told WND both sides are discussing the possibility of an arrangement in which Syria would lease the Golan to Israel for 50 or 99 years, or Syria would allow the creation of an industrial park zone in some of the Golan where Israelis can enter and work, but not live, without Syrian passports.

The source said Syria would offer Israel "full diplomatic relations" in exchange for an agreement.

Asked repeatedly by WND whether full relations meant normalization of contact between Israelis and Syrians, the source only repeated the stated Syrian offer of "full diplomatic relations."

The difference between relations and normalization is significant. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in the 1970s that translated into relations but not normalization – there is little contact or business between Egypt and Israel beyond diplomacy. Egypt's media is intensely anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Egypt's school systems are considered anti-Israel.

The Syrian source told WND that in the discussions, Israel has not yet brought up Syria's relationships with Iran, Hezbollah or Palestinian terrorist organizations. But he said he assumed those relationships would be discussed in the future. He said it was "unlikely" Syria would cut off Iran.

Syria is in a military alliance with Iran. It also is a sponsor of Hezbollah and allows the chiefs of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups to reside openly in Damascus, where both organizations maintain headquarters.

It was not immediately clear how the Israeli-Syrian talks would impact the U.S. or Lebanon.

The Syrian source, though, said Damascus "understands" an international probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is "very stalled." Syria has been largely blamed for the assassination.

The Jewish Golan

News media accounts routinely billed the Golan as "undisputed Syrian territory" until Israel "captured the region" in 1967. In actuality, the Golan 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 was still farmed by Jews until 1947 when Syria first became an independent state. Just before that, the territory was transferred back and forth between France, Great 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 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, 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 dotted with ancient Jewish villages.