{"id":1691,"date":"2008-12-01T05:46:40","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T05:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2008-12-01T17:58:13","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T17:58:13","slug":"giving-back-the-golan-will-not-be-easy-by-shai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/giving-back-the-golan-will-not-be-easy-by-shai\/","title":{"rendered":"“Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy,” by Shai"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Golan<\/a>

Golan by Shai (Click to enlarge photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy
\nBy Shai, Nov. 30, 2008;<\/p>\n

*Shai is an Israeli\u00a0Advocate of Peace who frequently writes on Syria Comment<\/em><\/p>\n

This weekend my wife and I, and some friends, decided to head up north for a short holiday. \u00a0This is a beautiful time of year, when everything is green outside, but not too much rain. \u00a0After spending a day in Tzfat (Safed), a spiritual center for Jewish Kabblah, and a serene town with a thriving artist colony, we decided to go visit the Golan. \u00a0We drove up through the northern part of the Heights, passing by Kal’at Namrud (Nimrod Fortress), Majdal Shams, Mas’ade, very nice Druze villages, at the foothills of the awe-inspiring Hermon mountain. \u00a0For Israelis, this is the tallest mountain in the country, and the only place we can go skiing. \u00a0We then headed south along the Heights, and ascended Mt. Bental, which overlooks Quneitra.<\/p>\n

There is a cafe up there, on Mt. Bental, which is run by Kibbutz Merom Golan, just underneath. \u00a0The cafe is called, oddly enough, “Coffee Anan”. \u00a0Probably as some tribute to the previous UN secretary general, but more specifically because of its Hebrew meaning, “Cafe in the Cloud”. \u00a0The view is tremendous. \u00a0All of Syria, it seems, lies beneath the mountain and stretches endlessly to the east and to the north. \u00a0 One can see the UN station in the neutral-zone, separating the Israeli-controlled Golan from the Syrian plateau. \u00a0Also in view are old and new Quneitra. \u00a0One cannot, of course, visit the old one, but its ruins are clearly visible to all – a historic reminder to the terrible battles that ensued here in 1967 and 1973. \u00a0When we were there it was quite misty, and as the cafe name suggested, we befittingly often found ourselves above the clouds. \u00a0It was almost an enchanted feeling, and very beautiful and relaxing.<\/p>\n

It was also quite surreal. \u00a0Here we were, sipping nice warm coffee, while contemplating what has, is, and will be happening on these very hills. \u00a0The cafe, funny enough, has on its walls framed pictures of different tourist sites in Syria, with articles and information written below it in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. \u00a0It wasn’t clear to me whether the owners were hopeful about peace with Syria with, or without, returning the Golan. There are people up there, after all, who believe in “peace-for-peace”.<\/p>\n

I took the opportunity to ask some of the young men and women who were running the place what they thought will happen with the Golan, whether they believed it will be returned to Syria. \u00a0One or two shied away from a direct answer, but one girl, probably 22 or 23 years old, said quite confidently “It’ll never happen”. \u00a0Hoping to better understand her, I reminded her of the ongoing indirect talks over the past 5 years, as well as very clear suggestions made by previous Prime Ministers in Israel as to that effect. \u00a0But she remained resolute, and repeated “It’ll never happen”. \u00a0At the risk of pushing the limit, I tried another approach – my pseduo-psychologist one… \u00a0“But surely,” I said, “even if you are absolutely certain that the Golan will remain Israeli forever, isn’t there any part of you, on the conscious or subconscious level, that questions it?” \u00a0“No,” the nice girl responded, “I believe that what I think is what will happen, so I don’t allow myself to think anything else…” \u00a0That summarized it for me quite well. \u00a0And in a way, it made sense.<\/p>\n

This young girl was born and raised on the Golan. \u00a0This is the only home she knows. \u00a0Israel annexed the Heights in 1981, so she was born in a place her country considered its own (unlike the West Bank or Gaza, which were never annexed). \u00a0This girl knows the Golan better than she does Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem. \u00a0To her, the “courageous” pro-peace and anti-peace activists matter less than the land she and her parents have been working over the past forty years. \u00a0Talks of peace, when accompanied by land giveaways, her-land giveaways, are a bigger threat than the enemy himself. \u00a0To this girl, giving back the Golan is as foreign a notion as, say, giving Florida back to the Indians would be for the average Floridian. \u00a0History is irrelevant, when facts-on-the-ground are not only well established, but indeed well personal. \u00a0Could I blame her for feeling this way? \u00a0Would I feel any different, were I in her shoes? \u00a0Probably not.<\/p>\n

We do know that there are also Golan residents that have voiced different opinions. \u00a0Some are ready to move “back” into Israel, should peace ever become a real-possibility. \u00a0They are ready to pay the personal price, in return for a safer future for their children, and for those of all of Israel. \u00a0While still a minority, it seems they are a growing one. \u00a0What will make it easier for Israel to give back the Golan one day are two facts about its Jewish residents: \u00a0First, there are only some 16,500 of them, unlike the 260,000 living in the West Bank. \u00a0Second, most have not moved to the Golan for the same religiously-motivated reasons as have the settlers in the Palestinian territories. \u00a0Ending the physical occupation of the Golan will not entail, quite likely, overwhelming religious interference by leaders and Rabbis across the country. \u00a0In fact, the religious party Shas has herself suggested in the past a readiness to give back land territories, in return for peace. \u00a0It never exhibited this “flexibility” when it came to matters of Jerusalem. \u00a0But the Golan has been, and will be, different.<\/p>\n

Personally, I must admit giving back the Golan will not be easy for me either. \u00a0Though I do not feel nearly the same kind of attachment to this land as its residents do, I too have managed to fall in love with it, as anyone who has ever been up there would. \u00a0On this visit, I told my wife and our friends that although I will be saddened the day we return the Heights back its owners, I will be happy to return here again and again, even if I first have to obtain a Syrian visa… \u00a0On the emotional level, and we must come to understand this (whether we agree with it, or not), giving back the Golan will be, to most if not all of its residents, like the severing of an important limb in their body. \u00a0The fact that some politician may one day suggest that this limb was actually “transplanted” into their body, and was never theirs in the first place, will not help their personal trauma nor their pain.<\/p>\n

But before this is possible, before Syria can peacefully attain control of the Golan, most Israelis will have to believe it is worth it. \u00a0History lessons, and UN resolutions, will not convince the people who are still fearful of Syrian tanks rolling off the Heights, on their way to Tel-Aviv. \u00a0That it was always Syrian territory, also before 1967, will not encourage Israelis to vote for a peace agreement, if they remain suspicious of Syria’s alliances with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. \u00a0It is this emotional realm, that Syrians and Israelis will have to traverse, and it is here that the “battle for peace” will have to take place. \u00a0The sooner we understand this, the sooner the nice young girl we met up at “Coffee Anan” will begin to question her innate and understandable reluctance to leave her home, for the sake of peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy By Shai, Nov. 30, 2008; *Shai is an Israeli\u00a0Advocate of Peace who frequently writes on Syria Comment This weekend my wife and I, and some friends, decided to head up north for a short holiday. \u00a0This is a beautiful time of year, when everything is green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,15,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golan","category-israel","category-peace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n"Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy," by Shai - Syria Comment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/giving-back-the-golan-will-not-be-easy-by-shai\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy," by Shai - Syria Comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 Giving Back the Golan Will Not Be Easy By Shai, Nov. 30, 2008; 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