http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0493/9304041.htm
Did Syrians Shell Israeli Farmers From the Golan Heights?
Myth: "For nearly 20 years, Syrian troops sat up here and fired down at Ein
Gev, at farmers in the fields, at children at play, at people leading peaceful
lives. They might call it war against the 'Zionist entity,' but I'd call it murder, the
murder of people who only want to live in peace."
-Golan Heights Jewish settler Joel Sheinfeld, quoted in the Los Angeles Times,
Jan. 4, 1993
Fact: "This oft-repeated claim about Syrian shelling ignores the repeated
attacks by Israeli kibbutzniks and border police against Palestinian and Syrian
villagers who were indigenous to the Syrian-Israeli demilitarized zone, which
led to the shelling in question. The demilitarized zone, set up after the 1947-48
war, consists of three small patches of land along the then Syrian-Israeli
border-a total of 66.5 square kilometers-populated by both Arab and Israeli
villagers. According to the General Armistice Agreement of 1949, sovereignty
over this area was to be determined at a later date, in the context of an overall
peace agreement.
"Israel had failed to conquer these areas during the war and was determined to
do so gradually in the years that followed, starting as early as 1951. As a
result, the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, assigned to monitor the
armistice, recorded thousands of incidents of major and minor clashes across
the Syrian-Israeli border, most of which stemmed from Israeli encroachments
onto Arab-owned village lands.
"The typical incident involved small groups of Israeli kibbutzniks-armed with
weapons illegally brought into the demilitarized zone-moving their tractors or
other equipment onto Arab-owned farmlands to use these lands for their own
agricultural projects. Arab farmers . . . resisted by firing at whoever or whatever
was trespassing on their property, followed by return fire from the kibbutzniks,
joined by Israeli border police, on an even larger scale.
"The Syrians, atop the Golan Heights, would then come to the aid of the
beleaguered Arab villagers by shelling in the direction of the kibbutz from which
the original attack came. This would be followed by Israeli artillery fire and air
bombardments, often inside Syria proper. Specific, major incidents include, but
are by no means limited to, the 1951 expulsion by Israeli forces of some 2,000
Arab civilians from three villages in the demilitarized zone, never to return, and
the 1960 Israeli occupation of the entire village of Tawafiq inside the zone,
which soldiers could only enter after cutting through the many layers of barbed
wire the villagers had erected to protect their homes and farmland. In this case,
it was only Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights that saved Tawafiq; and it
was that shelling that finally forced Israeli troops to withdraw from the
community.
"These events, and many more like them, have been extensively documented
by four consecutive UNTSO chiefs of staff who were responsible for keeping
peace and reporting armistice violations on both sides . . . To put this period
(1949-1967) in its proper historical perspective, then, what is now termed by
Israel's advocates as 'Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights' represents only a
portion of what was recorded by U.N. observers at the time as 'mutual
exchanges of fire on both sides,' caused mainly by Israel's campaign to
gradually annex Arab-owned land inside the demilitarized zone. . .
"It is clear from the historical record that the phrase 'Syrian shelling from the
Golan Heights' did not even exist at the time and does not appear in U.N.
records. That is because the point of origin-the Golan- was in itself not
relevant, and because the real problem of the time was Israeli land
encroachment, of which the Syrian responses were but a result. The phrase, in
fact, came into use only after the 1967 war, by people seeking to justify Israel's
retention of that particular territory."
- Research Director Laura Drake of the Council for the National Interest,
Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1993
