Newspaper Page Text
V •
THI SOUTH BIN KRAAITB
Friday, Aug. |4, 1970
SPECIAL REPORT FROM JERUSALEM
New Settlements Are Built
To Hold Israel’s Borders
By VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK
Vice President & Editor, JTA
JERUSALEM—
“If we don't go to the borders,
the harden will come to us."
- Thus » veteran director of the
Golan Heights settlement program
explains the frenetic efforts to
settle that strategic ares. Thus,
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too, a young Nahal settler justi
fies the sacrifices he 'and his
colleagues and their families are
making to create a new home
out of a bleak, barren and dan
gerous outpost a mile from the
frontier where the threat of
Arab attack by night is added
to the backbreaking toil under
a burning sun by day.
The pioneer spirit has never
deserted Israel. Today, it is one
of the most evident and stim
ulating features of life in that
country. You see it and feel it
in its historic and most exciting
form in the Golan Heights
where there is, everywhere, a
determination and a haste to
make the area’s 1,200 • square
kilometers once and for all time
Jewish and Israeli.
You find this old pioneering
spirit alive in the Arava, the
long, low, hot desert stretching
from the Dead Sea to the Golf
of Akaba, where pioneers In the
old Zionist tradition, are not
only reclaiming the desert but
are establishing and holding Is
rael’s frontiers in a^vftal area
You find this pioneering spirit
in another form in the old Jer
usalem Corridor and in East
Jerusalem where a fantastic
building program is providing so
many homes for Jews in what
was formerly a purely Arab area
that the old demographic line
dividing Jewish and Arab Jerus
alem is being completely erased.
But you find the pioneering
spirit at its most intense in the
raw young settlement of Em
Zivan, near Kuneitra in the
Golan Heights, less than five
kilometers from the Syrian
border. Here a group of young
sters, some of them not out of
their teens, with three infants,
are establishing a settlement,
building their homes, bringing
their fields under cultivation
and earning cash to support
themselves by making plastic
sandals on a subcontracting ar
rangement with the older settle
ment of Dafna in the Upper
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and South Carolina...Alabama,
Florida and Mississiopt^-Days are
bright, nights are brigk, and there's
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The brewing industry—as a
good citizen should—is involved in
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Galilee. They are doing this in
range of Syrian guns at a time
when their maximum effort
must be to complete the under
ground shelter where they can
take refuge from enemy artillery
fire.
The Israelis are sharply divid
ed over the future of the terri
tories their army occupied in
the Six-Day War. Many—and
their number apparently grows
' each day the occupation con
tinues—insist that what Israel
has, Israel must hold and there
can be no withdrawal. Others,
among them former Prime Min
ister David Ben-Gurion, believe
that most of the territories
should be given up, but there is
little agreement among them as
to what Israel’s future boun
daries should be. Mr. Ben-
Gurion advocates, in the inter
ests of a lasting settlement with
the Arab world, the renuncia
tion of all the territory occu
pied except for the Jerusalem
district and the Golan Heights.
Not too many go along with him
all the way on this.
On the retention of an un
divided Jerusalem, there is no
disagreement to be heard in Is
rael. The Old City and East
Jerusalem have become such in
tegral parts of the reunited city
that no one can see Israel ever
agreeing to severance of any
part of them. The Old City, after
19 years of isolation behind for
bidding walls, has once again
become a vibrant factor in the
life of every Jerusalemite, if
not of every Israeli. It would
not be going too far to say that
the Old City has once again
become the real focus of Jewish
life and the spiritual fount for
the non-observant as well as
for the devout.
As to the Golan Heights, no
one who has ever stood on the
ruins of a Syrian gun emplace
ment there and looked out over
the lush plains and trim villages
of the Galilee which its guns
dominated could ever agree that
this natural fortress should ever
be placed in alien hands and
permitted to threaten the Jew
ish farmers in the valley below.
Israelis may, and do, ' disagree
about the future of the West
Bank, the Gaza Strip or the
Sinai Peninsula, but there is no
disagreement about Jerusalem
and the Golan Heights—the new
Jerusalem areas and the Heights
are now and forever part of Is
rael.
If yon did not see divided
Jerusalem between 1948 and
1967, you won’t understand the
tremendous difference unifica
tion has made, for there is a
blending of the Arab and Jewish
populations in the narrow lanes
and alleys of the Old City, a
freedom of movement from one
quarter to another of the re
united city that many New
Yorkers do not enjoy at home.
The taxi-driver 'you hail in
Rehavta may be an Arab as
likely as not. The Old City
merchant who tries to enveigle
you into visiting his shop may
be Jewish. Arabs work in
'“Jewish” Jerusalem and Jews
do business in the Old City and
East Jerusalem. Mayor Teddy
Kollek has seen to it that there
are no economic or geographical
discriminations. Social barriers
may not have broken down yet
—there is very little evidence
for the visitor of Arab-Jewish
social contact—bat then, there
was very little of that either in
the old Mandate days of an
undivided Jerusalem.
From Teddy Kollek’s urban
pioneering in Jerusalem you fly
to, Rpsh Pina and then motor
up to the Golan Heights to find
the most startling of contrasts
ih at land of paradox and con
trast. Most of the Golan Heights
had not been cultivated for gen
erations—certainly not for the
years of Syrian rule. Hundreds
of acres were used for military
purposes; military roads, tank-
traps, gun emplacements, under
ground bunkers, fields of barbed
wire and mines. The Syrians
must have spent literally mil
lions in constructing an imi
tation, miniature Magipot Line
there. 1 -
Except for the Druze, about
8,000 of them, and some Cir
cassians, there was only a hand
ful of farmers in the Heights.
(The Circassians fled with the
Syrian Army. The Dfuze re
mained and prosper.) Most of
the civilian Arabs living in the
Golan Heights were the families
of officers stationed there or
were providing services to the
army. The land, rich and fertile,
blessed with abundant water
resources, lay fallow.
This the Israelis quickly began
to correct. The Keren Kayemeth
—Jewish National Fund—moved
heavy equipment into the area
and roughed out mile after mile
of roads making every part of
the new territory and. every mile
of the frontier easily accessible.
Huge machines raked the heavy
red earth, digging out the rocks
and preparing the fields for
cultivation. KKL bulldozers
created a vast artificial lake near
Kuneitra to hold the water es-
t the moun
and channel it to two hew set
tlements being established in
the area. Other KKL teams laid
pipelines for irrigation and for
distribution of surplus water to
areas not so well blessed.
Continued on page 7
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