Posted on 02/19/2002 1:08:10 PM PST by knighthawk
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's justice minister on Tuesday said Israel should buy the disputed Golan Heights from Syria as a way of keeping hold of the strategic plateau.
Numerous attempts to negotiate Syrian-Israeli peace have collapsed over the question of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War.
A peace agreement proposed in 2000 fell apart over Syria's rejection of an Israeli demand to keep the Sea of Galilee's eastern shore, which lies at the foot of the heights.
``We have to find an original way to keep the Golan Heights in Israeli hands in the future,'' Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said during the opening of a courthouse in Katzrin, the largest Israeli settlement on the plateau.
``One of the proposals is to buy the Golan from Syria,'' he said. ``I will be the first to join this effort, and I am ready to have my salary cut to help buy the Golan.''
Sheetrit did not suggest a monetary figure.
After its 1967 capture, Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 and populated it with settlers. In all, about 18,000 Israelis live there along with some 17,000 Arabs, who follow the Druse religion, an offshoot of Islam.
The building of Israeli settlements there has angered Syria.
On Thursday, hundreds of Arab residents on either side of the Israeli-Syrian cease-fire line held a demonstration to protest Israel's occupation of the plateau, chanting together: ``With our blood and soul, we sacrifice ourselves for the Golan.''
Somehow I don't think they're going to give it up.
If Israel were to give up the Golan, would those 18,000 Israelis be allowed to stay, as the Druse have?
...Israel should buy the disputed Golan Heights from Syria...
...which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War."
To the victor go the spoils. Is somebody missing the obvious here?
The guy is an idiot.
He is implicitly saying that the Golan is Syria's to sell, or not sell. It is not. It is part of Israel
ML/NJ
--and partly by the same right that the United States holds many of its own territories-- the right of conquest.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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At this point "buy" it from who could become an issue. Having already annexed the Golan, suggesting a purchase merely delegitimizes the annexation.
Is not the question moot?
Since the Syria of the last war no longer really exists and is failing, why bother?
The status quo is that the territory is de facto Israeli at present
I disagree, Israel owes the Arab world a good swift kick in the 'nads for all of the unprovoked attacks they have had to fend off over the last 50 years.
But if Syria falls to ISIS, the new ISIS government would repudiate the sale, and Israel would be back where they started.
What have you been smoking? OF COURSE NOT! Jews have been forcibly expelled from virtually all of the Muslim countries, just for being Jewish.
If anyone thinks the Arabs will be satisfied with money for Golan, they're not thinking right either. I'm afraid until Israel wins another big war--once again decisively defeating incompetent Arab armies...there will continue to be belly-aching and victimhood. It's all the Arab Muslims know how to do well.
There shouldn’t be any dispute over land ownership. God granted Title and Deed to Israel 4,000 years ago and recorded it in the best Registrar of Deeds known to man:
Genesis 15:18
In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
That same Title was transferred through Isaac by promise. Not Ishmael!
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