By Micah Halpern
I've Been Thinking:
The Golan Heights have been hot these past weeks. It all relates back to Syria.
On the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliated groups have made progress in capturing important towns, crossroads and vantage points. They are now positioned just yards from the Israeli border.
I expect that Bashar Assad will make a major play to redeem the Golan from the rebels. The reason Assad needs to take back the Golan is clear. Damascus is just 40 miles away. If the rebels control this southern flank they have easy accesses to Assad's center of power.
At the other end of the country, in the north, the battles are far away from Assad as he sits in Damascus.
Saudi Arabia had been supporting the rebels, but they have now stopped supporting those rebel forces connected to al Qaeda out of fear that the extremist Islamic approach will not work. So now the Saudis are supporting only sub groups of rebels who are, or will eventually, fight al Qaeda.
On the Israeli side Druze residents of the Golan Heights have made an appeal to the UN to permit them to vote in the June 2nd election in Syria. Almost every single Druze person I have heard says they will vote for Assad. They want to cross over and vote or get the ballots brought across the border and into Israel by the United Nations.
Druze families straddle the border. Some are in Syria and some in Israel. Some Israeli Druze even attend university in Syria. For decades people have crossed back and forth over the border under the supervision of the UN. In the fall Israeli Druze farmers bring their entire apple crop over the border into Syria for sale in Damascus.
Since this eruption in the Golan Heights, courtesy of al Qaeda, Israel has closed the UN border crossing into Syria.
Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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