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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-halevi28-2008may28,0,7689717.story
Trusting Syria on the Golan Heights
[Los Angeles Times] Yossi Klein Halevi - Few in Israel believe that the regime of Bashar Assad will honor an agreement. No Arab state has consistently shown greater hostility to Israel than Syria. The Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas is headquartered in Damascus; Syria is Iran's leading Arab ally. The Golan poses no moral or demographic dilemmas. There is no occupation of another people: the area is populated by barely 20,000 Druze, and an equal number of Jews. Israelis sense that, for the sake of quiet if not formal peace, it is far better to have their soldiers overlooking Syria than for Syrian soldiers to be once again looking down on the Galilee. The writer is a senior fellow of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.