A simple question

Haaretz for January 19 says that in dismissing Syrian calls for reopening negotiations,

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday that the final outcome of future negotiations with Syria would be the return of the Golan Heights. Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Sharon said that "talks with the Syrians are courtesy calls; they mean ceding the Golan Heights."

And assuming the logical corollary, that of an established peace with an internationally (and mutually) recognized border, the problem with this is...?

It does serve to point up the fact that "security" - at least military security - is not the only, probably not even the main, issue here and perhaps not in the West Bank, either. The Golan Heights area is a rich one which provides Israel, earlier Haaretz reports have said, with significant amounts of water. I suspect that the thought of surrendering such an asset - even to its rightful owners - gives the Israeli government more pause than any military consideration.

It's been said by analysts for some time that future conflicts would focus ever more closely on controlling resources (particularly water) rather than land. As a blunt example, you may control the river, but if you don't control the source of the river, your water supply can still be threatened. We may be seeing more than a hint of that here.

I wonder what would happen if Syria let Israel know through back channels that as part of a permanent peace agreement it would be willing to work out some sort of sharing of the water resources of the Golan. Now, they may not be willing to do it. And Israel might not be willing to believe them if they did. But I do wonder how putting that idea in play would change the equation.

Footnote: The same article says that Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an interview with a London-based Arabic news service,

denied a report in the Sunday Telegraph, which claimed that Syria has chemical and biological weapons. "As long as Israel has a huge arsenal of weapons, there's no need to talk about Arab countries," he said.

Uh, well now, that's not exactly a denial, is it?

It's true that only one nation in the region has the only true weapons of mass destruction - nuclear ones - and it has been given pretty much a free pass on the issue, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else is guiltless. Personally, I'm not aware of any evidence that Syria has or is attempting to have any serious "WMD" capability, but remarks like Assad's make me more, not less, suspicious.

As always, the key is found in the quote: "Secure borders do not bring peace. Peace brings secure borders."