Military History / Mountain out of a molehill?

Hahar Shehaya Kemifletzet (The Mountain that Was as a Monster): The Golan Between Syria and Israel, by Yigal Kipnis Magnes Press (Hebrew), 351 pages, NIS 94

Yigal Kipnis's book deals with an issue that is consistently high on the Israeli public agenda: the settlements on the Golan Heights. He focuses on the 25 years between 1967 and 1992, but also deals with the preceding 18 years, from the signing of the armistice agreement with Syria on July 20, 1949, up to the Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Heights from the Syrians.

The main argument put forth by Kipnis, a geographer and historian, is that the image of the Golan built up over those years in the eyes of the Israeli public was that "the mountain has become a monster," in the words of a song by Yoav Katz, entitled "The Little Girl from Gadot" (a kibbutz at the foot of the Heights). This perception reached its climax in 1967, "but continued to be shaped and preserved in the collective memory, where it remains fixed to this day." Kipnis asks if this image is justified, and he proceeds to respond to his own question in a way both complex and riveting.

From the narrow point of view of the residents of the border settlements, who "underwent the routine of life in a war zone at a topographical disadvantage, the answer is decidedly yes," writes the author. But this subjective memory does not correspond with the historical facts. In actuality, there was no justification at all for the menacing image of a Syrian Golan Heights. The primary reason for this was Israel's military superiority over Syria, which only increased as the years went by. In this context, Kipnis points out something that is to a large extent an absurdity: "The greater that Israel's military superiority became, themore powerful was the image, and the more Israel made use of its superior force, the power of the image reached new levels."

A second reason the image of the mountain as monster lacked justification was Israel's policy toward the areas along its border with Syria, which, in keeping with the armistice agreement, were demilitarized zones. Israel's decision makers were certain that it was crucial to ensure that the international border would become the permanent line between it and Syria in the future, and that until then steps should be taken to insure that Israel would be in full control of the demilitarized zones. Kipnis stresses that the misleading impression was created that those zones were within the Green Line - that is, within the international border - and under Israeli sovereignty, and that this impression "influenced the Israeli public's attitude toward the confrontation that took place over the control of these zones."

Israel carried out many actions, such as the establishment of new settlements (like Tel Katzir and Ha'on, kibbutzim on the southeast shore of the Kinneret in 1949), the evacuation of Arab residents and the demolition of their villages, and the instigation of military operations against Syria. In many cases, these operations were violations ofthe armistice agreement. In 1976, about five years before he died, Moshe Dayan, who served as head of Northern Command and then as Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, referred to this explicitly; when his statements were published many years later, in 1997, they caused no small uproar."We thought then, and it went on for some time," Dayan said, "that we could alter the armistice lines by military operations that were less than war. In other words, to grab territory and to hold onto it until the enemy would give up and give it to us."

A third reason has to do with the start of the fighting on the Syrian front during the Six-Day War. In the war's first few days, the Syrian operations were symbolic. They were in no hurry to give in to the Egyptian pressure to launch an attack on Israel, and sufficedwith artillery fire and a few air raids. The battle for the conquest of the Golan was therefore not the result of an existential or strategic necessity, but of lobbying by politicians and settlers who argued that theopportunity to get rid of the menace of the "Syrian monster" should not be missed.

Non-spontaneous settlement

Kipnis argues trenchantly that Syria took a line that, in view of the circumstances, can be described as passive. That is to say, it focused on defense and hoped the war would pass by without causing the country damage. When Dayan, who was appointed minister of defense a few days before the start of the war, decided to conquer the Golan - a decision he later defined as one of the biggest mistakes of his life - the weakness of the monster was evident. It took less than 30 hours for Israeli forces to break through the front line and conquer most of the Syrian Golan. A large part of this time was taken up not by actual warfare between armies, but by a "battle against the clock," because of a deadline that had been set for a cease-fire.

Kipnis comes up with some interesting points about Israel's settlement of the Golan. For one thing, it was by no means a foregone conclusion in the days immediately after the war, even though the vast majority of the villages and towns in the area occupied by the Israeli army had been abandoned by their inhabitants. The settlement process was not a spontaneous development, as is generally believed; Kipnis stresses, rather, that it was initiated by the political leadership and supported by state institutions from the very beginning.

The central figure driving the process was the prime minister, Levi Eshkol, who had been involved in settlement activity his entire life. He maintained daily contacts with the heads of all the bodies involved insettlement activity, among them my father, Raanan Weitz, who succeeded him as head of the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, which Eshkol led for many years before joining the government.

Very soon after the war's end, on June 19, 1967, Eshkol's cabinet made a dramatic and secret decision: It would sign peace agreements with Egypt and with Syria based on the international borders. All the ministers supported it, including Menachem Begin, who had joined the government on the eve of the war and was a full partner in formulating the decision. It proposed "offering Syria a peace agreement based on the international border, ensuring Israel's water rights, and the demilitarization of the Golan Heights."

The decision was conveyed to the American administration, which was totransmit it to the rulers of Egypt and Syria. Kipnis suggests that, "Contrary to conventional wisdom, Egypt and Syria did not rejectthe peace offer ... for the simple reason that it was never passed on to them by the U.S. government." When no reply to his generous offer was received, Eshkol understood that "the vision of a peace agreementwith Syria was not about to be realized in the near future," and he laid down the policy that there would not be a withdrawal from the Golan without a peace agreement. "This policy was based on the deployment of anIsraeli presence on the Golan and on plans for settlement there, as well as demonstrating determination to hold on to it for as long as was necessary," Kipnis explains.

Eshkol led the settlement enterprise on the Golan until his death in February 1969. Discussing Eshkol's cautious and wise leadership,Kipnis writes that, "the vagueness and ambiguity that he created because of the need to act without arousing reverberations and objections in world public opinion, sometimes gave the impression that he washesitant and weak, but in retrospect, the decisions and their implementation corresponded with Eshkol's positions. One may therefore say that his bemused manner and his minor-key style of decision making were in fact management tools that he employed in order to get his own way, with agreement internally and with caution externally."

The trauma of evacuation

Kipnis also discusses the evacuation of the Golan settlements during the Yom Kippur War. On the day the war broke out, October 6, 1973, the government decided to evacuate the civilian population to avoid their capture by the Syrians. This decision had a significant effect on settlement activity in the region after the war, and it also hada traumatic effect on the self-confidence and self-esteem of the settlers themselves. Yehuda Harel, one of their leaders, had this to say about it, 20 years later: "The settlers have not forgotten their failure, that theyabandoned the settlements."

The evacuation raised weighty questions: Are the settlements a security asset, or a burden? Did they still play the same military role they did before the establishment of the state? From the settlers' point of view, just asking these questions was intolerable; the answers could undermine the very justification for settlement on the Golan. Referring to them, Kipnis writes that the evacuation "magnified the damage to the settlement ethos. In order to cope with this ... there was a demand to integrate the settlers into the army's military deployment on the Golan. Such a deployment, which was appropriate for past wars, was meant to rehabilitate the image of the settlements and to fit in with the Zionist ethos, but in the end it was never tested and it withered away on its own."

There are some inconsequential factual errors in the book: Israel's ambassador in Washington in 1967 was Avraham Harman and not Ephraim Evron; Yigael Yadin did not resign from the government, but remained a cabinet minister until its last day, in August 1981; in August 1953, the prime minister was David Ben-Gurion, not Moshe Sharett; and more. Beyond this, however, Kipnis's book is a significant contribution to both academic research on the settlements in the occupied areas, and also to the political debate on the future of the Golan, a debate whose importance to our future is difficult to exaggerate.

Prof. Yechiam Weitz is a historian.

Haaretz BooksOctober 2009