Now they may soon be homeless. As part of his plan to withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon within a year, Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak hopes to strike a security deal with Syria, which has de facto control of Lebanon. Officials close to Barak say that means a territorial concession on the Golan. The 17,000 Israelis who built the settlements fear they will be sacrificed for the sake of peace. “They are betraying the people who came to live here,” says Uri Barak, 69. “I am not some radical settler. I came here with the blessing of the government.”
It’s not hard to understand why the Golan settlers feel so forsaken. Israel’s militia retreated from part of the “security zone” in southern Lebanon last week, fueling fears that a total pullout is imminent. The settlers lost their voice in the government when The Third Way, a political party devoted to retaining the Golan, lost all its Knesset seats in last month’s election. And Golan residents were stung by revelations last month that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had conducted secret talks with the Syrians. “The bulk of the contacts had to do with security issues,” says Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s foreign-policy adviser. “There was undoubtedly some progress made.”
It’s not clear exactly what a deal on the Golan would look like. Syrian President Hafez Assad maintains that Yitzhak Rabin promised to cede the entire Golan Heights and says he won’t enter official talks unless Israel agrees to such a pullback as a starting point. That’s unacceptable to Ehud Barak. But Damascus has indicated there is room to compromise on demilitarizing the area around the border and allowing Israel a post on 9,000-foot Mount Hermon. Barak’s advisers are confident that Israelis would willingly trade the Golan for full peace with Syria and an end to the quagmire in Lebanon. Even some Golan residents are resigned to leaving. “If there’s peace with Syria, Israel will be better off,” says Olga Kiselgoff, who lives in Katzrin. “I don’t want Barak to make us leave, but he knows about security better than I do and he’ll see to it that there’s peace here.”
But most settlers believe ceding the Heights would be a huge tactical mistake. Not only would Israel give up a great vantage point, it would risk having its water supply diverted or polluted by Syria. Furthermore, the diplomatic ramifications with Syria remain murky. Assad’s health is poor, and it is unclear who will succeed him. To give up the Golan to a shaky dictatorship would be “stupid,” says Yehuda Harel, a founder of the region’s first kibbutz, Merom Golan. “We would get a peace agreement without peace.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it likely be the last.
