Elyakim Haetzni
Photo: Dan Balilty
The Golan liquidation sale
Deal with Syria has huge price tag; international forces won't protect us
The "Syrian track" and the Golan's "price tag" are always open for debate. And when Syria arms itself, the military elite, of all people, goes to the media to exert pressure on the government to surrender to the enemy's demands, despite the fact that demonstration of weakness makes war more likely (see the role of French generals in the downfall of France in 1940.)
However, the Golan Heights have a "price tag" of their own: Twenty thousand additional civilians will be turned into unemployed, bitter refugees; 33 communities, including the town of Qatzrin, will be destroyed; an economic price tag of billions will be exacted from 38 percent of Israel's wine export, 40 percent cattle meat, 50 percent cherries and 50 percent of its mineral water, plus the loss of water sources.
It will cost us the relinquishment of beautiful landscapes and tourism in one of the most densely populated countries of the world; abandonment of the Hermon, Hamat Gader, Gamla the majority of the Kinneret's eastern banks and abandonment of dozens of synagogues dating back to the periods of the Mishnah and Talmud, and it will expose the superficiality of our roots: Forty years of Jewish rule are annulled vis-à-vis 19 years of Syrian rule; and there's the dangerous insight: Israel will never be permitted to win and hold on to territories it has occupied in a just and bloody defensive war.
The peace camp is now caught up in a new illusion – international forces. On top of the forces already positioned in the north they are seeking to position additional forces in the south, and in the future in the east as well to protect Tel Aviv against Katyusha rockets being fired from the hills of Judea and Samaria. Moreover, the appeasers are demanding that the Golan be evacuated out of fear of Syrian commandos; they seem to forget that UN forces are already stationed there and if they have the power to protect us – why don't we place their trust in them?
Abysmal rift in Israel
The "price tag" syndrome also clouded the 40-year celebrations commemorating the victory of the Six Day War. The appeasers could only see the negative aspects: International opposition, terror, demography, "ruling over a foreign people" – and opponents in turn respond by arguing that only a fool would choose poverty over the concerns of investors, inheritors and thieves.
A sane people celebrates its greatest victory and doesn't mourn achieving the pinnacle of its dreams: Historic Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron and Gush Etzion, Mount Grizim and Mount Ebal, Shilo and Beit El, the Ayalon and Dotan Valleys and other places comprising the most intimate memories in the national and religious consciousness that ultimately became a reality.
In 1948 we conquered a bridgehead and now we have actually reached Zion itself, and half a million Jews – some 300,000 in Judea and Samaria and some 200,000 in Jerusalem – have established some 400 communities.
Is there another people in this world that after all this would seek to destroy such an enterprise – education, science, Torah, industry, agriculture, a fantastic infrastructure – that cost billions? Where is that fool who would dispose of all his assets because they cause him too many worries?
And since not all members of the peace camp are fools, one can only reach the inevitable conclusion that an abysmal rifts exists between the basic perception of our existence here: Those who see the essence in achieving the physical Land of Israel with its spiritual implications, and those who view it only as means for external essence: Liberalism, socialism, "the good life," a haven from persecution. This is the tragedy that has prevented us from celebrating our festivity as do other peoples of the world.
