Decision to build homes on Golan threatens talks

A decision by the Israeli government to build 4,800 new housing units on the Golan Heights threatens to silence the moderate …

A decision by the Israeli government to build 4,800 new housing units on the Golan Heights threatens to silence the moderate tones heard from Jerusalem and Damascus in recent days with regard to renewed peace talks. The project could effectively double the Jewish population there.

A ministerial committee headed by a Cabinet hardliner, Mr Ariel Sharon, on Tuesday approved a plan to expand four settlements on the Golan Heights, which were captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981. The plan provides for about 2,300 housing units and 2,500 vacation units. The expansion is by far the biggest on the Golan since Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government came to power in 1996.

The plans appear to fly in the face of remarks earlier this week by the Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai. He called on Syria to resume peace talks and suggested that Israel would be prepared to make territorial concessions on the strategic mountain range, in exchange for strong security arrangements and guarantees from Damascus.

Mr Mordechai, one of the most moderate members of the government, refused to make any comment on the Golan decision.

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But Mr Netanyahu, who is on holiday with his family in the north of the country, yesterday confirmed that expanding Jewish settlements on the Golan Heights was a permanent policy of his government. And Mr Sharon said he did not believe the settlement plans would have "any negative impact" on talks with Syria.

"We are talking about expanding existing settlements," he said.

The former Labour Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, however, lambasted the decision as "superfluous and irritating", and criticised the government for sending out mixed signals.

"Either they should stop singing serenades under Syria's window," he said, "or they should stop indulging in provocations."

Talks between Israel and Syria were broken off in 1996 when Mr Peres was still in power, and have not resumed since. The Syrians, who want to retrieve the whole of the Golan Heights, have insisted that the talks restart at the point they had left off - they say the Labour government had offered in principle to withdraw in exchange for a full peace treaty.

Mr Netanyahu, however, has said he will not agree to any preconditions and has reasserted his position that holding onto the Golan is vital to Israel's security.

But the decision to engage in massive construction on the Golan, said Professor Itamar Rabinovich, who headed the Israeli team in peace talks with the Syrians under the previous Labour government, was sure to send a very negative message to Damascus.

Peter Hirschberg is a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report