You write :"... Golan Heights was given to Syria as part of the Mandate, ...". Bret, THAT sentence of yours sounds as if the action of the British, namely ceding in 1923 of the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria, was a legal action. AS IF the British had the right to cede Golan Heights to French Mandate of Syria. BUT that is far from the truth. IT was an ILLEGAL action of the British -- the British had NO authority to do THAT. SO Bret, what Israel did in 1967 was merely the recovery of her OWN land -- which was illegally given away by the British in 1923 to French Mandate of Syria. AS SUCH, Israel can move her citizens to Golan Heights WITHOUT permission from Syria. SO Bret, there is NO agreement needed to construct residential or other buildings on the Golan Heights. BTW taking the opportunity I like to thank FO #21 from Belgium for his important input.

David, you got your History wrong. You need to do some study. Or, are you lazy to study ?

"I'm sure, Mr. Thomas, that the New York Times is a newspaper that quite frequently adds touches of pro-Israel bias" You're only sure? You mean you don't know because you don't actually read it. You pick quotes from biased sources that claim to take its quotes from the Times. I say "claim" because again, your side is known for faking news. From doctoring photos for Reuters to editing quotes to your liking. I won't even mention the complete invention of a nation.

Its name,history,people,synagogues,Gamla,water,Katzrin,hispin,nahal zavitan !!!!!

Giving back the Golan to Syria is a grave error. The Golan is indeed a great place for the Syrians to fire artillery and rockets across the Galilee into Israel. There has never been a single reason for us to believe that the Syrians or any other Arab group will ever adhere to a treaty or agreement of any sort. Their sole aim and intention is the destruction of Israel. Don't ever forget this. The Idea of a Palestinian state is also total insanity and I can't imagine why our president supports such an idea, it is simply irrational and incomprehensible! I have visited Israel and regard it as a great nation with wonderful people and I surely pray that no harm will come to the nation of Israel!

You quoting from the New York Times explains it all. You have no idea and obviously never read the NYT, as if you did, you would realize that most of their reporters tend to show an anti Israel bias. Regarding the Golan, to ignore history just shows your utter ignorance....you have no case......its smarter for you to give up an argument you cant win!

as if it is jolan the only problem .oh even sina is a problem

court system, major media and ruling parties, simply come out and state their intention to create the NEW ISRAEL...i.e. a shtetl (or ghetto) in the ME surrounded by hostile nations...whose ultimate demise and dismantling will fulfill their anti-zionist dream. They are clearly so guilt ridden about being Jews and still being alive and kicking that they will do anything, say anything, and give anything away to bring about our final destruction. I think I'm going to be sick.

Usual scaremongering by the Israeli Rightwingers. Why can't there be a peace compromise that will prevent the return of 1m Syrians to the Golan? Why can't there be a dimilatarization. Why immediately declare that the Damascus regime will be toppled, the nex regime will develop nuclear weapons and/or poison the water in the Sea, or whatever? We know why. So that there will be no peace, Israel will forever struggle against terrorism, all educated, intelligent people leave to go to the US and Europe, religious fanatics/rapid settlers take over the governmetn of Israel, use nuclear weapons on the West Bank, etc., etc. Like this picture? Not really? Don't think it's realistic? Why then paint a similar future for the other side?

I don't think anyone here is painting a picture whereby if Israel retains the Golan Heights, there will be a brain drain to the US and Europe by Syrians. Nor do the Syrians live in fear of having to eternally battle terrorism if they don't make peace with Israel. Your "putting the shoe on the other foot" moral doesn't work.

if you want peace .wars do not work and may be moral doesnot work .but i prefer moral in wars and peace

The Armistace signed in 1949 recognized Israel's control over the green line-borders. The Arab league reneged on that treaty almost imediately and vowed to continue fighting. Egypt's Monarchy was overthrown in the early 1950s, and its new leader, Gamal Abd'el Nasser, put himself in charge of the destroy-Israel campaign. Egyptian intelligence officers assisted Egyptian militants like Yasser Arafat (that name sound familiar?) to set up terrorist groups in the Palestinian refugee camps, first in those of Egyptian-controlled Gaza and then in the Jordanian controlled West-Bank (dispite King Husseins admittedly determined efforts to prevent this). From about 1954 to 1957 Egyptain and palestinians carried out numerous gurerrilla raids against Israel, once in a while provoking retaliatory raids by Israel. In 1957 Nasser siezed the Suez canal and imposed a naval blockade against Israel, sparking the Suez crisis in which Israel conquered the Sinai, which it returned a few months after the war's end on the condition that the peninsula remains demilitarized, the Suez remain open, and a UN force known as UNEF be installed in Gaza and the Sinai to prevent further raids. Uncharacteristically for a UN force, this one proved to be effective, which forced Arafat's Fatah and other terror groups to move to Syria and begin a new campaign from the north. Israel Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria had signed a US-Brokered agreement circa 1954 to share the water fo the Jordan that came from springs in the Syrians, at Nasser's urging broke that treaty. They sent the Palestinian militants to bomb the Water Carrier Israel was building in accordance with that treaty, while simultaneously working on an Egyptian-funded water-diversion project so that Israel could not compplet the water carrier. In 1964 the Syrians took their agression up a notch and started using artillery batteries on the Golan Heights to shell Israeli farming communities in the Galillee. That very same year Nasser had the Arab league unify all Palestinian terror groups into the Palestine Liberation Organization in preparation for what he said would be a war to liberate Palestine (note that the territories are still under Egyptian and Jordanian control at this time and Palestine refers, and has alwasy refered, to green-line Israel). But for the time being Nasser is all talk, while most terrist and regular military attacks are coming from Syria. In 66 Israel finally launches an air-assault on the Golan, taking out some of the artillery batteries that had been shelling Israel for years and the uncompleted water diversion project. The northern border becomes a little quieter but attacks still continue. In the spring of 1967 Nasser proclaims that the time has come to liberate Palestine, and urges all Arabs to join him, but he can't do much with UNEF between him and Israel, so he orderst them to leave, which they do within a matter of twenty-four hours, and remilitarizes the Sinai in violation of the 1957 treaty. He then closes the Suez again once more violating the 57 treaty as well as international law regarding free passage of the seas, thus committing an itnernationally recognized act of war. At the same time Egypt and Syria are arrying their armies on Israel's borders and talking in terms that make Ahmedinijaind look like Mother Theressa. On May 30th Hussein signs a defense pact with Egypt and arrays his own troops for battle, the PLO is mobalized in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sinai, and Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, and just about every other Arab country sends contingents to bolster the beligerents.

I won't say much about the war itself except that in the hours before the strike on Egypt the Israeli governmen sends the King of Jordan a telegram assuring him that Israel doesn't want war with Jordan; Hussein responds that he cannot back out of his agreement and as soon as the war begins Jordanian Artillery opens fire on Israeli positions, provoking an assault on the West Bank. The assault ends so quickly that many Jordanians end up stuck in t he West Bank and are metomorphosed into Palestinians. All of the Western Powers back Israel in the aftermath of the war and France even says Israel should be allowed to Annex the conquered territories as punishment for Arab agression, but in the end they bow to Soviet pressure and pass all those resolutions people like David like to quote. For its parts Israel forbids its population to settle in the territories and offers to return them all in exchange for a peace agreement. The Arab league, meeting at Khartoum, with Arafat reprisenting 'the Palestinians' unanimously rejects the ideo of peace with Israel, and edicts are issued forbidding palestinains to leave the refugee camps in the territories. These refugee camps are in awful condition after 19 years of neglect, and so the occupyin Israelis build the Palestinians some decent housing and provide basic services, while most of the PLO flees to Jordan-propper, where in '71the try to overthrow Hussein. The putsch fails, and the Jordanian army starts summarily executing anyone they can find associated with the PLO. Arafat and company literally swim accross the Jordan and ask for and recieve Asylum from the 'opressors'. From the West Bank most of them move to Lebanon, where they raise a new terror army from the local refugee camps, which will be used to carry out raids against Israel in the early 80s precipitating the first lebanon war. Meanwhile in 1973 the Syrians and Egyptians invade Israel and the Palestinians support them; the Arabs are defeated once more but this time the Israelis offer no concessions and instead permit the construction of settlements. However settlement construction in the 70s is relatively low, mostly rebuilding of pre-independence Jewish communities such as Gush Etzion that were destroyed in the 1948 war. To find out where most of todays settlements came from we must fast-forward to the mid-80s when the PLO militants who had remained in the West-Bank launch a terror wave known as the first Intifada. The Israeli respnse is to build settlements on land adjoing the towns from which the atacks originate, and it works; by 1990 the first Intifada has completely collapsed and there were almost no terror attacks in Israel for three years, until Rabin brought Araft and his officers back from Tunisia (where they had fled after the Israelis took beirut in the First Lebanon War) and gave them control of the major cities of the West Bank in the Oslo Accords. That's when the Second Intifada, started, and it continued unabated for ten years (except for a few years under Netanyahu) until in 2003 the Israeli government adopted a similar policy to the one that stopped the first intifada; any city, town, or village from which an attack originated would be sealed of with check-points. Any questions?

Well, to ask you two, have you read the New York Times? And how often? I mean, the two of you (Jay3 for certain) do not even live here in the USA and you are questioning America's unconditional support for your actions. In fact, the NYT is only among many other US news networks with an overt pro-Israel bias; you can see this whenever an Israeli is killed, as opposed to a Palestinian. The rate of reporting Israeli deaths in the headline or the first paragraph of the Associated Press is 131%; for Palestinians that is 66%, almost half that number. Furthermore, when an Israeli is killed/ injured, the US networks are sure to give the dead person's name, interview village residents, report the reaction of politicians, portray the damage, depict you people as victims, and mention them for the next two/ three weeks. For Palestinians these same networks mention how many dead, the IDF's account of events, and some background info usually aimed to absolve the IDF; that is what I have seen American media including NYT does. So Jay3, please shove your ((its smarter for you to give up an argument you cant win!)) up your giant backside because your statement ((you would realize that most of their reporters tend to show an anti Israel bias)) has as much credibility as using the Balfour Declaration as the law when drawing the boundaries of a state that DID NOT EXIST nor did a significant Jewish majority when it was issued. I told you to read the second part which says, "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Somehow I don't particularly believe that this has happened in regards to 1948. So by all means: show me what Moshe Dayan really said and come back; for some reason you people seem to be paranoid as to find anything as damning as this is "fake." Wake up!

The very day that Israel declared indepencence Azam Pasha, the secretary general of the Arab league issued a long, rambling declaration calling for Arab armies to destroy Israel and drive the Jews out, while Haj-Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and thus one of the highest religious authorities in the Muslim world issued the following statement "I declare Holy War my Moslem brothers, kill the Jews, slaughter them all. Over the next twenty-four hours several Arab armies, as well as most of the Arabs of Palestine heeded those calls, and initiated the 1948 war. If you look at a map of the partition plan, you will see that Israel is effectively split into three parts, and each of these parts was surrounded by Arab-controlled territory, and in some cases like West Jerusalem individual Jewish towns were surrounded and subjected to siege and starvation. Only by destroying the enemy forces b etween them and linking up, could the isolated Jewish pockets in green-line Israel avoid destruction. Those outside the green-line, such as Hevron and Gush Etzion, were not so lucky, and were completely destroyed and their populace killed or driven out, as were many Jewish communities in Egypt, Syria, and other Arab countries. Now remind me exactly what right of the Arabs it was that the Jews violated in 1948.

War=peace

What Mr. Balfour supposedly referred to was that if a Jewish state in Palestine that the indigenous inhabitants’ right to live would not be infringed. When the declaration was issued the Arabs had absolutely no intention of genocide (but I do not believe your constant fear mongering of “another holocaust;” it’s speculation at most). But more to the point, your rambling posts are seriously uninteresting and biased, the usual cut-and-paste affair. The point that I just snapped was when you said, ((and so the occupyin Israelis build the Palestinians some decent housing and provide basic services)); after the 1967 war over half of the West Bank and a proportion of Gaza were seized for military and settler purposes and Sharon “the bulldozer” made thousands upon thousands of people homeless (a harbinger to his prime minister career in which 4170 homes were summarily destroyed). Now tell me that they provided services for Palestinians living in the territories. Next: I suppose, Mr. Daniel, that by destroying enemy forces you mean killing off men, women, children and the elderly; this method more than anything else terrorized Palestinians into exodus in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Duwayima and other villages. Furthermore, the exodus and the greater war of 1948 did not begin in May 15, but a month earlier when Plan Dalet was put into effect; it includes operation chametz (to destroy villages near Jaffa), operation Yiftach (to cleanse the Galilee), and operation kilshon (occupy the Arab portion of Jerusalem). All these were to usurp as much of Palestine as possible and cleanse it of its indigenous population; I say screw Balfour and his "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The catastrophe he created resonates through the decades; time will tell the extent of his deed.

You have defeated Alex#40 -- soundly and clearly. I like that. IT is just a matter of COMMON SENSE -- something which Alex doesn't apply. Someone who does not apply common sense will only mean one of the two things -- either he is a lunatic (meaning, common sense is not expected from him), OR he is a malicious person (meaning, he deliberately, he purposefully blanks out his common sense).