JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the occupied Golan Heights an integral part of Israel and said he would never hand the area back to Syria, in comments published on Tuesday. “As long as I serve as prime minister the Golan Heights will remain in our hands because it is an integral part of the state of Israel,” Olmert was quoted as saying by Israeli newspapers. | Guess it's not polling very well |
Israel captured the strategic plateau in the 1967 Six Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. Damascus has repeatedly demanded the return of the Golan Heights, and peace talks between the Jewish state and Syria have stalled since January 2000 when both sides failed to reach agreement on the territory.
Then Labour prime minister Ehud Barak had envisaged handing back most of the territory, save for a small strip along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel’s main reservoir of fresh water. Olmert has recently said he does not consider Syria as a reliable partner with which to conduct negotiations because Damascus ”continues to support terrorism”. Defence Minister Amir Peretz also said Tuesday that Syria’s army has lowered its heightened level of alert following the end of the Lebanon war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia. “There was a heightened level of alert in the Syrian army and now we see it being lowered,” Peretz’s ministry quoted him as telling members of the parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee. Several days after the start of the war in Lebanon on July 12, Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said that Syria had raised the level of alert of its security forces, fearing an Israeli strike.
Israel has accused Syria of supplying weapons to Hezbollah as well as to radical Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. |