Israel Cannot Defend Itself Without the Golan Heights - Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, Part 1

Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland participated in press conference on April 22, 2009 held at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs about his new special report on Defensible Borders for the Golan Heights.
View the entire briefing at http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=7....

http://www.defensibleborders.org/security/
http://jcpa.org


Defensible Borders on the Golan Heights
By Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland
Introduction:
For most of the period since the June 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Golan
Heights from Syria, Israel has viewed this strategic region as the front line of its defense in the
north. Prior to 1967, Syrian armor and artillery on the Golan posed a constant threat to Israeli
farms and villages in the Galilee below. However, in the years that followed, with the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) positioned on the Golan, Israel acquired an optimal line of defense
to enable its quantitatively inferior standing army to hold back a Syrian ground attack and
provide Israel with the time it needed to mobilize its reserves and neutralize any aggression
against it.
Despite these military considerations, since the early 1990s, both direct and indirect contacts
have taken place between Israel and Syria to examine the possibility of arriving at a peace
agreement. In most cases the contacts did not mature into genuine and open negotiations
with the intent of arriving at a detailed agreement. The one exception was the effort
initiated by Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the years 1999-2000. The negotiations at that time
reached the stage of discussion over details that included security arrangements intended
to compensate Israel for the loss of the Golan Heights. The talks at that time did not lead to
the signing of a peace agreement, but the reason behind the failure to reach an agreement
did not stem from an appreciable gap on the security issue. On the security issue, both sides
appeared to reach almost total agreement.
Given that background, when indirect Israeli-Syrian negotiations were renewed again in
2008 under Turkish auspices, they were conducted under the assumption that there was
a military solution that would compensate Israel for the loss of the Golan and that such a
solution was acceptable to the Syrians.
The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that Israel does not possess a plausible solution
to its security needs without the Golan Heights. Not only was the "solution" proposed in the
year 2000 implausible at the time, but changing circumstances, both strategic and operative,
have rendered Israel's forfeiture of the Golan today an even more reckless act.

Please read the full report:
http://www.jcpa.org/text/DefensibleBorders-GolanHeights.pdf

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[IsraelisJordan]

The Jewish (Fake) State cannot defend itself without the Sinai Peninsula

[janjan55555]

@MOLTENSULFERWARNING And there is a reason why people like you belong in a psychic ward

[LordKaisen]

@MsZeitgeist85 a treaty? That can be ripped up can't it? 

[MsZeitgeist85]

If they have a treaty with Syria then there is no reason to hold onto the Golan Heights as a buffer zone.

MORE BULLSHIT EXCUSES FOR ISRAEL STEALING LAND.

[itaymr]

@Oddballmarine90 You misunderstood, only SOME of the soldiers have ran away in fear, but a big majority of them stayed.

[Oddballmarine90]

@itaymr

"the Syrian soldiers wich some of ran away because Israel was so deep in Syria."

You literally just said that the Syrian soldiers were in retreat. ISRAEL didn't stop attacking even with a ceasefire because they wanted more land (i.e. East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.)

[itaymr]

@Oddballmarine90 The reason we took it is because the people in Syria were shooting from there on our civillians(people were raised 20 years in shelters, and I mean it literally, they didn't go outside for weeks somedays, even months. The UN gave us new defenceable borders and told us that the limit is what you're talking about, there was only an agreement from Syria but there was no accual ceasefire and the Syrian army did not stop attaking

[Oddballmarine90]

@itaymr

But thats no reason to take the Golan Heights 3hrs after the ceasefire. Simply because the Syrians didn't defend it.

[itaymr]

@Oddballmarine90 Syria leaders that commanded the millitary, this also scared the Syrian soldiers wich some of ran away because Israel was so deep in Syria.

[Oddballmarine90]

@itaymr

Syria "who" said