http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/syrias-renewed-alliance-making-israel-nervous/2007/09/14/1189276983595.html
Syria's renewed alliance making Israel nervous
September 15, 2007
IN THE Golan Heights there is a spot where you can get out of your
car, buy an ice cream and enjoy the view of a place where, if enough
miscalculations are made, World War III might start.
Large numbers of Israeli tourists took advantage of the sunshine and
the Jewish New Year on Thursday to visit a look-out point near their
country's Checkpoint Charlie-style crossing with the ruined Syrian
town of Quneitra.
"During the six day war [in 1967] Israel's army climbed the Golan
Heights and after two days of courageous and bitter fighting captured
the region," says an audio track provided by the local tourist board,
over stirring patriotic music.
"After the war and Syria's rejection of Israel's peace proposals,
Israel began to settle the Golan ... In 1973 during the Yom Kippur War
the Syrian army launched its surprise attack on Israel and invaded the
Golan Heights ..."
Events of the past couple of weeks suggest that this rather partial
history of the Golan Heights could be due for another update. Israel's
leaders were unusually silent about the air force's attack in northern
Syria last week. But by the end of this week the US media, fed by Bush
Administration leaks citing Israeli military sources, was once again
talking about a covert nuclear program in a Middle Eastern country.
According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the attack in
the desert is linked to Israeli intelligence that Syria is receiving
nuclear technology, if not weapons, from North Korea.
But this time around, a US-led intervention in the Middle East could
have even broader implications for world peace than the disastrous
Iraqi phase of the war against terrorism.
Not only is Syria part of President George Bush's "Axis of Evil", with
Iran and North Korea, but recent months have seen the renewal of its
old alliance with the Kremlin, which lapsed when the Cold War came to
an end.
President Vladimir Putin's Government has sold Damascus large
quantities of the portable anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah's
outnumbered fighters used against Israel's invading army in south
Lebanon last year. President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic regime in
Syria has also bought new Russian anti-aircraft systems that could
erode the Israeli air force's long-prized ability to overfly and bomb
its neighbours without encountering defences, as it did in Lebanon.
Some speculative versions of last week's adventure in the Syrian
desert say Israel was trying to test Syria's new defences.
The Syrian Government claims that the planes fled into Turkish air
space after they found themselves targeted by Syrian radar and/or
missiles.
But Russia is interested in Syria not merely as a customer for its
weapons. According to reports, the Russian navy is planning to
reactivate the Cold War naval facilities that its personnel still man
in the Syrian port of Tartus.
Following the Soviet Union's collapse, the Russian navy withdrew its
Mediterranean forces into the Black Sea. Now flush with energy
revenues and a resurgent nationalism, Mr Putin is again signalling
Russia's intention of taking a more confrontational stance against the
US and its allies, reactivating the shadow war between Russian bombers
and NATO fighters in the sub-Arctic.
Israeli newspapers reported this week that Russia plans to equip
Tartus with its latest anti-aircraft missiles, capable of defending
most of Syria's air space, and that the missiles would be manned by
Russian personnel.
While Russia views the eastern Mediterranean as part of a global
chessboard, for both Syria and Israel the conflict is purely local. At
its heart is control of the Golan Heights, 1250 square kilometres of
mountain, farmland and scrubby uplands seized and colonised by Israel
40 years ago last June.
Since then, the focus of Syrian foreign policy has been to regain the
Golan Heights and to return to their homes the descendants of the
50,000 to 80,000 Syrian civilians who were driven out
in the fighting and whom Israel has since replaced with 16,000 of its
own settlers. Having repeatedly come off second best in conventional
battles with Israel, Syria has used the Hezbollah militia in South
Lebanon to wage a normally low-intensity proxy war, hoping to maintain
pressure on Israel to return the Golan in exchange for a peace treaty.
While the two parties reportedly came close to agreement seven years
ago, attitudes have since hardened. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud
Olmert, said this year that Israel will never return the Golan to
Syria. Opinion polls suggest that a large majority of Israelis would
not give the area up even as the price of peace.
Before 1967, Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights could shell Israeli
positions and villages in the Jordan valley north of the Sea of
Galilee.
Control over the Golan eliminates this risk and gives Israeli armoured
forces a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Syrian-African Rift
valley, poised to strike north to Damascus, within sight of the
Israeli look-out positions on the crest of Mount Hermon. Amid renewed
rumours of war, Israeli tank brigades have staged large-scale
manoeuvres on the Golan Heights preparing, according to one senior
Israeli military correspondent, for operations to "break through
obstacles".
Syria, on the other hand, no longer has an air force or armoured units
capable of launching an attack.
Economically, the Golan is the source of about half of Israel's water
resources, produces most of its wine grapes and has the country's only
ski resort. Cattle ranchers and hikers can roam in the relatively wide
open spaces of the upland plateau, through bulldozed villages and
elaborate stone-walled field systems built by the indigenous Druze,
most of them now exiled in Syria.
"There was no agriculture in the Golan Heights before 1967," says Yom
Kippur veteran Ruven Miller, 53, looking out over the Israeli
vineyards near Quneitra this week. "Most of the buildings that you see
in the Golan Heights were not in use. They were Syrian military bases.
[This] was one big military base for Syria."
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