Israel will not withdraw from the entire Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top policy adviser said in an interview published on Friday, rejecting Syria’s key demand for an agreement.
The two countries could split the territory, suggested Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s national security adviser and the aide widely seen as closest to Netanyahu. But in the comments in the daily Haaretz newspaper, he said Israel must remain on the Golan Heights to a depth of several kilometers and cannot withdraw in full even in return for a peace agreement.
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the territory in 1981, a move that was never internationally recognized. Syria has always maintained that peace is possible only if Israel withdraws entirely from the Heights.
Syrian forces used the strategic plateau to shell nearby Israeli communities before 1967, and Israel fears those communities will once again become vulnerable should the Heights be ceded. Israeli officials also argue that holding the area gives Israel early warning of Syrian military moves and a buffer zone in case of attack.
The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents.
About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.
At 1,250km², the Heights are roughly one-third the size of the US state of Rhode Island.
Indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey between representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert have not been renewed under Netanyahu, who replaced Olmert in April. Direct talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000.
Netanyahu has said repeatedly that Israel would not cede the Golan to Syria.
Israel needs to retain part of the Golan “for strategic, military and settlement reasons. For water, landscape and wine,” Arad said.
He nonetheless called on the Syrians to resume peace talks with Israel with no preconditions but “with each side aware of the other’s position.”
Like the contacts with Syria, talks between Israel and the Palestinians have also been frozen since Netanyahu came to power.
Under US pressure, Netanyahu has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, while attaching conditions the Palestinians reject.
But in the Haaretz interview, Arad took a dim view of the Palestinian leadership, saying he saw not a government but a “disorderly constellation of forces and factions.”
There “could be worse” leaders than Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Arad said.
“But even with him I don’t see a real interest and desire to arrive at the end of the conflict with Israel. On the contrary, he is preserving eternal claims against us and inflaming them,” he said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called Arad’s remarks “inappropriate and unacceptable.”
“Israeli officials must stop playing this broken record,” Erekat said. “President Abbas is president of the Palestinian people and he is a full partner. And he’s waiting for an Israeli partner.”
Israeli leaders have complained that Abbas is too weak to govern effectively. Abbas’ Western-backed government rules only the West Bank, one of the two territories the Palestinians seek for their future state. He lost control of the Gaza Strip more than two years ago to the Islamic militants of Hamas.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to