Israel Matzav

Is the Golan different than Judea and Samaria?

Sorry, the posts just went dry yesterday. I had an emergency to deal with.

Thirteen years ago, when Yitzchak Rabin broke his campaign promise never to negotiate Israel leaving the Golan Heights, the Jews of the Golan put together a slick marketing campaign that set them apart from the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. That marketing campaign is still bearing fruit today. In yesterday's Jerusalem Post, Anshel Pfeffer, who is one of the Post's left-leaning columnists, did a good job of explaining why:

Over the years, mainstream attitude toward the Golan became totally different from that of the other "occupied territories." There are a number of real and perceived reasons for this. While Gaza, Judea and Samaria embodied the riots of two intifadas, a month of frustrating reserve service each year for many men, difficult pictures every night on TV and bearded religious settlers, the Golan symbolized something else.

The Heights, which in 1981 were recognized by the Knesset as being an official part of the State, are the only ski resort you don't have to fly to, the advent of good local wine and a favorite vacation destination in faux Swiss chalets. Instead of hostile Palestinians, the only indigenous population is in the three Druse villages, great places to stop for humous or labane while the border has been quiet since 1973. Instead of messianic settlers, the Golan is filled with attractive, secular farmers.

The reality is quite different. Half the moshavim in the Golan are religious (while a majority of Israelis living in the West Bank are not national-religious), the Druse maintain their allegiance to Damascus religiously and despite being relatively low-key, the IDF presence on the Heights is massive.

But image is everything. West Bank settlers are called in the media and by most Israelis mitnahlim, a rather derogatory, marginalizing term, while the settlers of the Golan are much more positive mityashvim.

The closest Israel ever got to considering a hand over was during the premiership of Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s, though unbeknownst to most Israelis, Binyamin Netanyahu was a close second. At the time a slick media campaign entitled "The nation is with the Golan" mobilized huge public support, mainly by stressing the consensual and hedonistic aspects. The campaign, which was fronted by spokesmen unidentified with the right-wing, like war-hero Avigdor Kahalani and Labor stalwart and kibbutznik Yehuda Harel, succeeded where so many other settlement PR efforts failed. While many Israelis on a certain level had accepted a shrinking Israel in return for some kind of accord with the Arabs, they still couldn't imagine giving up the Golan.

And it's still unthinkable. It's not due to the strategic factors, like the Heights' importance for the defense of the northern approaches and its dominance of crucial water supplies - the West Bank's strategic value is if anything greater. Rather, it's because the Golan has become an inseparable part of our comfort zone.

For over two decades, the great majority of Israelis haven't ventured across the Green Line into Judea and Samaria save for military service, and biblical homelands such as Hebron and Nablus are regarded by most as alien territory. But on the Golan the water is sparkling, the Cabernet luscious and the climate pleasant. Even the most peace seeking Israelis are prone to the heretical thoughts that perhaps there are some things preferable to a peace treaty.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:03 PM