From Ynet News, by Martin Sherman, 17/5/08:
... Emmanuel Rosen's outrageous article "The power of weakness" ...urges Ehud Olmert to exploit the fact that he has totally lost public confidence and trust in order to concoct a hurried accord with Assad over the evacuation of the Golan. ... Because allegedly now he has nothing to lose!
...aside from the distasteful deception that Rosen urges in his blatantly undemocratic recommendation ...severe hazards to Israel's vital security interests ... are...starkly obvious ......
Strategic ...
...the huge military value of the Golan that gives Israel command over the approaches to Damascus and precludes Syrian command over the entire northern portion of Israel. This provides Israel with unequivocal deterrence, which has ensured that the Syrian frontier has been the most peaceful for over third of century – without Israel yielding a centimeter of territory. ...
... the intelligence gathering value of the area - particularly the ridge of hills on its eastern fringes and from atop Mt. Hermon (aptly dubbed "the eyes of the country") is indispensable.....
Economic ...
Moreover, the estimated direct cost of evacuation of the Golan runs in to the tens of billion of dollars with some estimates exceeding one hundred billion. .... Moreover, Israel will have to undertake huge investments in security and dramatically increase the defense budget to compensate for the relinquishing of the strategic advantages its presence in Golan provided....
Also, the Golan constitutes a vital portion of the drainage basin for the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret), and crucially affects both the quantity and the quality of its waters. Experts have warned consistently of the catastrophic consequences for the national water supply if the Syrians prevent the waters of the Golan from reaching the Kinneret, or if they pollute them before they do.
Finally, the detrimental social effects of the prospect of a withdrawal from the Golan would manifest themselves in three distinctly separate groups:
The evacuation of the Golan – a region far more part of the national consensus than Gaza – would be far more divisive than the Disengagement. It would cause exacerbated polarization, deepening despair and disillusionment in significant segments of the Jewish population and growing sense of alienation and disillusionment with the Israeli state and its leadership. ....
Meanwhile, the looming prospect of the return of Syrian rule will be a powerful inducement for the local Druze population to show their loyalty and allegiance to their new masters, and to endeavor to dispel any hint of suspicion of collaboration with the Zionist foe. It needs little imagination to realize that such a desire is easily likely to translate in acts of hostility against Israel and Israelis in order to prove their bona fide to their future rulers.
The withdrawal of the IDF from the Golan will compel it to redeploy in northern Israel, and particularly in the Galilee. Clearly this will require the expropriation of large tracts of land to accommodate new bases, installations and training areas. Inevitably much of this land will be in rural areas populated by the large Arab community. One hardly needs great powers of prediction to foresee the consequences of seizure by the IDF of land which the Arabs see as their own and which they depend on for their livelihood.
The foregoing list of the crucial advantages the Golan provides Israel, and the perilous dangers that relinquishing it would expose it to, is in no way exhaustive, nor adequately detailed. It should however suffice to demonstrate decisively that any initiative to withdraw from it would not be "bold" but "barmy", not "courageous statesmanship" but "craven capitulation."
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