The Golan Heights: Perilous Frontier

"The end of the United Nations mandate is approaching. We are obliged to be more alert than ever."

So read a warning in the dining hall of an Israeli kibbutz on the Golan Heights last week. That was a reference to Nov. 30, the day on which the third six-month mandate for the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force posted between Syrian and Israeli troops on the Heights is due to expire. Unfortunately, one Golan settlement was not secure enough. One night last week Arab gunmen infiltrated a kibbutz called Ramat Magshimim (Hill of the Achievers), which had a population of 200 Orthodox Jewish settlers. The Arabs killed three students and wounded two others before escaping across the Syrian frontier.

The attack on Ramat Magshimim focused new attention on Israel's most perilous frontier. The Heights are a very different proposition from the Sinai peninsula, where Secretary of State Kissinger was able earlier this year to work out a second disengagement accord between Israel and Egypt. For one thing, the Golan is a much smaller area -444 sq. mi., compared with 23,622 sq. mi. for the Sinai. For another, the Heights are not barren desert but an area of green, undulating hills with considerable strategic value. Although some military people say jets and missiles make this kind of thinking obsolete, neither the Syrians nor Israelis think so. The Heights look down on Syria's Damascus plain and dominate Israeli settlements around the Sea of Galilee (see map).

Vocal Hawks. If anything, the Syrians are even more adamant than the Egyptians in insisting that Israel must return all Arab lands seized during the Six-Day War. The diplomatic problem is that the Israelis have created on the Golan Heights what they euphemistically refer to as "new facts" -no fewer than 18 settlements containing 2,500 people, who have replaced the 70,000 Syrians who lived there prior to 1967. Since the region has ample water and long, sunny summers, the hard-working farmers have become prosperous. More significantly, since they occupy the sites from which Syrian bunkers shelled Israeli farmers in the Hula Valley below before 1967, the Golan colonists see themselves in a quasi-military role. There are no more vocal hawks in Israel today, report TIME Correspondents Marlin Levin and David Halevy, who last week toured the Golan from the foothills of Mount Hermon down to the Sea of Galilee.

Not a single Israeli living on the Heights is prepared to come down except as part of an overall peace agreement, Levin and Halevy discovered, although the reasons for remaining vary from kibbutz to kibbutz. Some settlements have been established by religious Jews with visions of recovering all the land encompassed by the Israel of biblical times. Says Gideon Bachau, 24, a former paratrooper who lives at Kibbutz Keshet: "This area is more Jewish than some other parts of Israel. Tel Aviv, for instance, was always Philistine country." Other settlers cling to the Heights for more down-to-earth reasons. Explains Zipporah Harel, whose husband was one of the first six farmers to occupy the area: "We are not here because of a love of this land or because it was once Jewish. We are here to protect our country."

Although settlements have been on the Heights for eight years -some kibbutzim feel secure enough to contemplate building swimming pools -the Israeli government has never spelled out a clear-cut policy concerning civilian development. Some Israeli military planners fervently wish that there were no settlers there at all. "Civilians simply get in the way when you are fighting," says one, recalling the October war when surprised Israeli troops took heavy losses on the Heights. Some dovish politicians even believe the Heights should be abandoned. Realistically, however, no Israeli government could retreat totally from the Heights and still remain in power.

No Token. What Premier Yitzhak Rabin would like to do is trade a piece of land for a piece of peace, as Israel and Egypt did in Sinai, but the options on the Golan are more limited. If Syria agrees to extend the U.N. mandate for a long period, sign a no-war pledge and begin negotiations, Israel is ready to hand back bits of territory, including five Druze villages in the shadow of Mount Hermon whose 9,000 residents would prefer to be under Syrian rule in any event. As part of a final peace agreement with Syria, Israel would cede back additional land, including five Israeli settlements, one of which would be Ramat Magshimim. The Syrians, however, reject any token or cosmetic adjustment of the sovereignty line on the Golan as insulting and inadequate. As long as there is so little prospect for compromise, the Israelis will be dug in on the Golan, more alert than ever.

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