By Stan Goodenough
The future of Israel's Golan Heights appears to be suddenly under renewed threat as reports during the Passover week that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had offered to give them to Syria in exchange for peace were quickly followed Sunday by Syrian demands for an Israeli guarantee of a complete pullout from the plateau.
According to the Qatari newspaper al-Watan, Syrian President Bashar el-Assad told Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Damascus demands a written commitment by Israel of the Jewish state's willingness to fully relinquish the Golan.
Assad said Israel's refusal thus far to make such a pledge meant that the time has still not come for peace.
Olmert, who spent some of his Passover vacation on the Heights, refused to deny Syrian claims reported on April 24 that he had messaged Assad via Erdogan that the Golan was up for grabs.
In September 2006, Israeli newspapers quoted Olmert as saying: "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."
Biblically part of the Land of Israel, and included in the inheritance of the Israelite half-tribe of Manasseh, the Golan Heights were part of the Ottoman province of Palestine until World War 1, and were thus included in the area designated for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Unilaterally lopped off from that promised land by the British government, the Heights were subsequently given to Syria, which after its independence in 1946 enjoyed control of the territory for just 21 years - during which time they used it as a platform for murderous aggression against Israeli farmers and communities in the Upper Galilee.
Israel took over, and subsequently annexed the Golan following two wars of self-defense against the Syrians, in 1967 and 1973.
Modern Israel has now controlled, settled, farmed and developed the Heights for more than 40 years - nearly twice as long as Syria.
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