News and Updates

Prime Minister Olmert is prepared to sacrifice the interests of the nation by trading away the Golan Heights in a futile attempt to save himself from criminal indictment for receiving illegal cash gifts, Mk Yuval Steinitz, former Chair and current member of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, told Likud Anglos in Beit Shemesh on May 21, the same day it was revealed that day Israel was conducting secret negotiations with Syria.

These negotiations are undermining the sanctions placed on Syria by the United States, as well as Europe's growing willingness to isolate Syria for it's role in destroying the fragile democracy of Lebanon through it's assassination of former President Rafiq Hairi and seven opposition members of parliament and its support of terrorist entities such as Hizbollah and Hamas.

It is immoral and shameful to let Syria swallow Lebanon in return for an illusionary promise of tranquility, Steinitz said. Syria has continued to support terrorism against Jordan, Turkey (the PKK) and in Lebanon, even while it ostensibly maintains "peace" and full diplomatic relations. It is irrational to believe that the Jewish state will be the first to establish true peaceful coexistence with this evil regime, and that we will all go to Damascus to eat humus, Steinitz said.

 Israel must never step down from the Golan Heights, which is vital to protecting the Galilee and our national security. On the other hand, the Golan is of negligible value to Syria, consisting of 0.5 percent of Syrian territory, with little Arab population or natural resources, and having only been under Syrian sovereignty for 19 years (prior to the 1967 war). We must insist on staying on the Golan until Syria accepts it, as they finally accepted Turkey's claim to the much larger disputed territory of Aleksandreka last year.