Because Sadat came to Jerusalem, and Assad didn’t.
When Egypt made peace with Israel, it cut its ties with the Soviet Union, with Muslim extremist and with the PLO and shifted its allegience to the U.S. Furthermore, Anwar Sadat made a conscious decision to win the hearts and minds of the Israeli public, and was largely suceessful. His willingness to take risks - which eventually cost him his life - convinced people here that he was truly interested in peace and reconcilliation.
The Assad boys, on the other hand, always came across as suspicious, self-serving bastards willing to haggle over every ounce of goodwill. Syria kept its connections with the Hizballla and with Iran, and never treated peace with Israel as a mutual interest of both countries, but as a bone to throw to the Zionist enemy. Now that Syria isn’t much of a threat anymore, they don’t have anything material to offer us in return for the Golan
You said for defense. If Israel gave up the Golan, why would Israel have to climb the cliff in a defensive war? Modern warfare would make any artillery on the heights an easy target for Israeli planes to knock out. The Heights make no difference in Israel’s ability to stop an invasion. Israel holding them is purely politcal at this point.
Sorry, but war is the way lines are drawn. I should have been clear that war encompasses more than physical battles. Kuwait was liberated because Saddam lost the public relations battle. He invaded an enemy who had more allies than Saddam had thought. However, victors in wars do not ALWAYS use the war as an opportunity to redraw boundaries, and are not under a mandate to keep conquered land. It’s all a matter of world pressure and political/military threat.
I just shrug my shoulders when people say a war was illegal. Until there is a world police force to enforce international “laws”, then those laws are not worth much.
AFAIK, most of the refugees from Golan does not live in tents. They live in temporary buildings in designated areas.
From my quote in the previous post: “The Syrian government rebuilt ten villages in territory adjacent to the Golan returned to Syria in 1973 where it resettled about 60,000 displaced Golan residents. The remaining Syrian displaced and their descendents, as many as 400,000 people in 2001, lived in government housing projects in the suburbs of Damascus, Dara, and Homs.”
The Golan refugees do have the right to work in Syria
The Golan refugees are not Syrian citizens. They do not have any citizenship or passport.
For most people a prerequisite for getting out of refugee camps and living a normal life is some education, which I suspect few children in refugee camps are getting.
When that is said, there are places around the world where refugees are born, live and die in tent cities, especially in Africa. It’s not that uncommon.
If the Golan was Syrian territory before the war, then the people living there must have been Syrian citizens, before the war. Why aren’t they Syrian citizens now?
That would make sense, but as far as I understand, some of them were already refugees when they got there (fleeing Palestine, as well as refugees of other nationalities) so they had no citizenship.
But yes, some of them should have been born as Syrians and they should have Syrian citizenship [off to google].
I’m pretty sure that most of the people with Syrian citizenship settled elsewhere, and that the ones who are in the camps are Palestinians who fled previous refugee camps in the Golan.
Fair point **Cmkeller ** about the Golan being essential for the early warning system, although I submit a few AWACs in the sky 24-7 would do the same job.
I would say ultimately who holds the Golan Heights would mean little in a Syrian Israeli war – as the forces are currently constituted and as I think they can reasonably be expected to be constituted for the next 20 years.
Essentially the Syrians have placed almost all their eggs in one basket: 4 brigades of surface to surface missiles, some probably tipped with Chemical and Biological warheads, whose main purpose is to offset the overwhelming superiority of the Israeli air force.
In the event of war Syria would launch, from Damascus to the Golan (not from the Heights themselves) nerve gas and conventail warheads against Israeli Air Force bases or against command and control centers, maybe the nuclear reactor in Dimona.
Through use of air power, missiles and long range artillery (none of which really needs to be on the Heights) Israel will do what it wants against the Syrians as it completely degrades the Syrian armed forces over the course of days (not weeks).
The idea of a Syrian armored column surviving long enough to strike into Israel (2004-2024) is simply not realistic given the overwhelming superiority of Israeli airforce.
I suggest that who owns the Golan doesn’t change this scenario – at all. 1967 was almost 40 years ago & Military tactics and technology have simply changed the Golan’s strategic value from what it once indisputably was.
Thank you for clarifying these points. I did read your previous post, but in my mind temporary buildings warped into tents. I did not know that most of the refugees from Syrian Golan were Palestinian.
Which brings me to another misconception I have that perhaps you can also clear up. I am under the impression Arab nations where Palestinian refugees live have no way for the refugees to become citizens of that nation. Is this true?
And why do the childen in the refugee camps get no education? Couldn’t the Arab nations educatethese children? Pro-Palestinian charities? Just sad.
And the part about living and dying in tent cities… I was aware of this. It is just as obscene anywhere it happens in the world.
Whoo hoo! Someone understands my argument and agrees! I also would be pretty suprised if Israel, one of the most technologically advanced armed forces in the world could not come up with alternative means to detect a suicidal invasion from Syria.
In the Arab Israeli wars, the Arabs believed that they stood a realistic chance of wiping out Israel. No sane Arab leader would thinks that they can wipe out Israel now. (Waiting for the arguments about the fear of an insane leader.)
I could hazard a guess. It’s no secret that there is a right-wing faction in Israeli politics that wants to annex the Territories (sorry, Judea and Samaria) and expel all the Palestinians. They justify this plan of ethnic cleansing on the grounds that, after all, there are a multitude of Arab countries to which the Palestinians could emigrate. Knowing this, Arab states might be reluctant to encourage the idea by granting citizenship to Palestinian refugees.
Right, that’s why there are “Holocaust Memorials” in countries all around the world, that had nothing to do with the persecution of Eastern Europeon Jewry in the WWII era.
That might be part of it, but more of it is that, if the Syrians let them integrate into Syrian life, the Syrians wouldn’t be able to say, “Look at all these poor refugees in camps. Isn’t Israel terrible?”
Well, I did promise some googling [damning self for promises] since I was not sure myself. So here we go:
70 000 Palestinian refugees arrived in Syria during the war in 1948, the majority settling along the border to Israel (Golan Heights area).
The number of refugees after the battle of the Golan Heights in 1967 vary from 70 000 (Israeli figures), via 100 000 - 125 000 (UN and refugee organizations), to 153 000 (Syrian figures). It’s unclear exactly how many were non-Syrians, however the consensus seems to be that between 15 000 and 20 000 were Palestinian double-refugees (refugees from the 1948 war). I suspect most of the others were Syrians.
Only 7 000 inhabitants stayed behind after Israel took control of the area.
2. After the 1967 war Syrian citizens from the Golan Heights were displaced to governmental housing projects. Non-citizens were relocated to various refugee camps. Today there are more than 400 000 Palestinian refugees in Syria (about 3 per cent of the total population), 115.000 of them officially live in refugee camps (10 camps). In those camps “house constructions remain very basic; houses are of mud or crude concrete blocks … the water supply is not constant, most streets are unpaved, and the water and sewage systems, where they exist, are in need of upgrading and repair”.
The camps are run by UNRWA while the Syrian government provides basic utilities.
But 70 percent of the Palestinian refugees are self-settled, meaning they have moved out of the camps and have settled on their own elsewhere in Syria.
3. About economic conditions: "[in Syria] about 26 percent of Palestinian refugee families [est. 105 000] live below poverty levels while 22 percent [est. 88 000] live on the poverty line.
Yes, that’s how it is. The Casablanca Protocol of 1965 stipulates that “Arab countries should guarantee Palestinian refugees rights to employment, residency, and freedom of movement, whilst maintaining their Palestinian identity and not granting them citizenship.”
But I was wrong about the education thing. In Syria, the legal status for Palestinian refugees appears to be better than elsewhere:
[ul]
[li]Palestinians do not require work permits … They have the right to own businesses. They also have the right to join labour unions.[/li]
[li]Although most Palestinians receive their primary and preparatory education at UNRWA schools, they continue their secondary school education in Syrian government schools. Enrolment in Syrian universities and institutes is open to Palestinians who are treated like Syrians. [/li]
[li]After 1968 … Palestinians were allowed to own one house per person, but they are still not allowed to own farm land [/li]
[li]Syria is the only country in the Middle East, apart from Jordan, in which Palestinians have full access to government services[/li]
[li]Palestinian refugees are granted freedom of movement in all parts of Syria. They are also given Palestinian Travel Document which is valid for six years, like Syrian passports.[/li][/ul]
That is, unless the house that you and your family are living in, is being bulldozed to make living space for “settlers”.
Anyways, the true purpose of the “Holocaust Museum” that is, for some reason or another, located in Washington D.C., is to remind those who were not responsible, of the persecution of Europe’s Jewish population.
See, if you are a victim, it is easier to get the coffers of the U.S. Treasury opened up. And once they are opened, you want them to remain opened indefinately, so the caricature of being a victim must be maintained.
Build a monument!! (U.S. taxpayer funded, of course.)
Yes, that’s how it is. The Casablanca Protocol of 1965 stipulates that “Arab countries should guarantee Palestinian refugees rights to employment, residency, and freedom of movement, whilst maintaining their Palestinian identity and not granting them citizenship.”[\quote]
So there is an actual treaty out there stipulating (in effect) that Palestinian refugees are to remain nationless and live second class lives until the Israel issue is settled? Whose cruel idea was that? Talk about playing politics with lives.
God knows how we got from the Golan Heights (nice place, but about as inviting as the surface of the moon - I find it hard to believe 70,000 people ever even lived there), but anyway…
Allow me to shrug. I’ve never bothered to visit the Holocaust Museum during my visits to D.C.m because I have a perfectly good one here at home (OTOH, I do not have an Air and Space Museum, so I usually go there). Not being an American, I can’t really tell you why its there, so I guess some people’s opinions are as good as other’s, and other’s opinions are worth much less. I’m not sure where you found your analogy - the U.S. museum contains, in all likelyhood, photos, audiovisual displays and pieces of abstract art; it does not contain thousand of families of refugees waitinf for 60 years to return to West Galicia. It really isn’t a much of a parallel.
Holocaust memorials, at least around here, serve two purposes: First, to honor the dead, and second, to remind us what happens if we let our guard down. The people in those boxcars are not us, they’re victims, and unfortunately always will be, but you know what they day: those who forget historyare bound to repeat it, or have it repeated on them. And don’t you forget it.
You sem to have a problem with the fact that the U.S. occasionally sends some money to Israel - for which we’re eternally grateful - but not, apparently, with the fact that other countries recieve equally large sums. That’s your perogative. My suggestion: write your congressman.
Captain Amazing, are you familiar with a psychological disorder called Munchausen By Proxy?
If the Golan was Syrian territory before the war, then the people living there must have been Syrian citizens, before the war. Why aren’t they Syrian citizens now?
