Dec. 15, 1981
The Golan Heights Annexed by Israel in an Abrupt Move
Begin Pushes the Legislation Through Parliament -- U.S. Criticizes the Action
By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
JERUSALEM, Dec. 14 -- The contested Golan Heights formally became part of Israel today as Prime Minister Menachem Begin pushed a measure through Parliament to annex the strategic zone along the Syrian border. Officials said the new measure provided that ''the law, jurisdiction and administration of the state shall apply to the Golan Heights.''
The area had been held under military occupation since Israel captured it from Syria in the 1967 war.
Vote Is 63 to 21
The legislation, enacted in Parliament by a vote of 63 to 21, brings about the first change in Israel's frontiers since 1967, when East Jerusalem,and an adjoining part of the West Bank were annexed. The rest of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Sinai have not been annexed, but remain under military government, which implies temporary Israeli control.
The Reagan Administration said the annexation of the Golan Heights was inconsistent with the Camp David accords. A White House spokesman said the United States had been given no prior warning of the move. (Page A11.) (In Damascus, the Syrian Government called the Israeli action a "declaration of war" and asked for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Page A12.)
Begin Cites Kuwaiti Report
Today's move by Israel appeared to foreclose any prospect of relinquishing the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace accord with the Syrians even if they ever showed interest in such a pact.
It was Syria's hard-line stance that Mr. Begin cited as an immediate reason for his action. He quoted a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai Al Amm on Sunday that President Hafez al-Assad of Syria had expressed the determination to refuse to recognize Israel "even if the Palestinians deign to do so."
But the annexation, which provoked objections from Syria, Egypt, the Soviet Union as well as the United States, grew out of deeper Israeli concerns, a mix of domestic and international developments that have created a rising sense of insecurity and a testy mood.
These include a pronounced shift to the right in Israeli politics and a frustration over futile American diplomatic efforts to curb Syrian influence in Lebanon, across Israel's northern border.
Israeli apprehensions have also been heightened by the Reagan Administration's apparent shift toward treating Saudi Arabia as a key to peace, with uncertain consequences for the Camp David accords, which the Saudis reject.
The assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt is also seen as a factor, and the annexation as an attempt to test the new Egyptian Government of President Hosni Mubarak on its commitment to peace. The Egyptian Ambassador to Israel, Saad Mortada, objected to the move, but said the peace process would continue.
Cabinet Taken by Surprise
The proposal by Prime Minister Begin took most of his Cabinet ministers by surprise, and the haste with which it was pressed on an unprepared Parliament was denounced by some opposition members as representing a suspension of the democratic process.
In protest, most of the opposition Labor Party boycotted the Prime Minister's speech, the debate and the votes. Mr. Begin initiated the annexation move after his release today from Hadassah Hospital, where he had been recuperating from a broken thigh suffered in a fall Nov. 26. He convened a Cabinet meeting in his home, and the ministers reportedly followed his lead without substantial dissent.
Parliament, with Mr. Begin attending the session in a wheelchair, was then asked to compress the three readings, votes and committee hearings required of all legislation into one evening.
The whole procedure,which took just six hours, was a display of Mr. Begin's political power and the disarray of the opposition. Mr. Begin said Israel had avoided consulting with the United States because to do so, to receive a "no" from Washington and then go ahead, "would have been much more serious" for American-Israeli relations.
"I say again to our American friends, we shall continue to be allies," the Prime Minister said, "but no one will dictate our lives to us, even the United States of America."
He recalled that when Syria possessed the Golan Heights, which overlook the Sea of Galilee and an array of Israeli towns and kibbutzim, shelling attacks had the civilian population repeatedly in their underground shelters.
"Spurred on by their deep and abiding hatred," Mr. Begin said, "they would open fire, from the heights, on our towns and villages, instituting a reign of blood and terror throughout the area. Their targets were man, woman and child -and the attacks took their toll in killed and wounded. In those days, which can under no circumstances be forgotten, it was said that the children being born were 'children of the shelters.' "
Gesticulating from his wheelchair, the Prime Minister called Syria's control of the Golan Heights before the 1967 war the result of arbitrary decisions made after World War II by Britain and France between French-controlled Syria and British-ruled Palestine.
The annexation was greeted with jubilation by Jewish settlers on the heights, who number about 6,000 and have been pressing for this move for a long time. It was regarded, in part, as a Government effort to mollify militant settlers in Sinai, who have vowed to resist physically when Israel returns the final strip of the desert peninsula to Egypt next April 25, as required by the peace treaty.
Among the approximately 12,500 Druse Arabs who live in the Golan Heights, mixed attitudes are anticipated. When the Government offered Israeli citizenship to the Druse, who are members of an Arab religious sect with secret tenets, only a minority accepted, arguing that they would prefer annexation, and virtually all of them eventually returned their Israeli identification cards under intense pressure from pro-Syrian Druse. Officials explained today that under the new measure the Druse will still be free to choose whether or not to become Israelis.
The timing of the measure was explained by several factors. With the world's attention now on Poland, and Washington's preoccupation on both Poland and Libya, less energy was thought to be available for outrage at Israel.
Egypt's negative reaction would, it was assumed, be dampened by a desire to avoid jeopardizing Israel's return of the final part of Sinai. A mission by Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, just ended in failure, with no evident progress on getting Syrian antiaircraft missiles out of eastern Lebanon or on curbing the steady buildup of heavy weapons by the Palestine Liberation Organization near Israel's northern border. A cease-fire, negotiated by Mr. Habib, has been in force across the frontier since last July, but Israel contends that the P.L.O. has used the respite to strengthen its forces.
During the raucous legislative session, two Communist Party members, Charlie Biton and Toufik Toubi, were expelled after calling a Druse member, Nasser el-Din, a "quisling" and a "traitor" for supporting the annexation. Prime Minister Begin called another Communist, Mayor Toufik Zayad of Nazareth, a "foreign agent" and "a contemptible Stalinist." He was asked by the Speaker to withdraw his remark, so he withdrew the adjective "contemptible."