I have posted below a story about Israelis wondering what the current and future unrest in Syria will mean for them.

Here is a bit that amazed and enraged me:

“On the bilateral front, it makes no difference who will be in power in Syria,” said Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry who heads a group advocating Israeli-Syrian peace. “No possible successor to Assad will give the Golan to Israel as a gift.”

Here is my comment on the comment by Alon Liel, "who heads a group advocating Israeli-Syrian peace" [which ought to be described as not "peace" but  a "peace treaty" which, in turn, is not a true "peace treaty" between parties both of which respect the notion of Pacta Sunt Servanda, but in the case of overwhelmingly Muslim Syria can ony be regarded as a "hudna" or truce treaty]:

This is a bizarre way of describing the situation. How can Syria "make a gift' of territory it no longer possesses? And what is the true history of the Golan? When the Mandate for Palestine was being created, it was the original intention of its creators, the League of Nations and, especially, the Mandates Commission under Professor Rappard, to assign the Golan Heights to the Mandate for Palestine. The Six Day-War began, actually, in mid-May, when Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that the U.N. peacekeeping troops in the Sinai be removed by U Thant, so that the Egyptians could move their troops up to the border with Israel, and invade. Nasser also said he would be blocking the Straits of Tiran, thus throttling Israel's trade lifeline to Asia. He told hysterical Cairene crowds that soon Israel would be destroyed, and they could all look forward to that day. Syria, instead of standing back, decided to join Egypt in its planned aggression. When Israel won, by force of arms, the Golan Heights, it was winning territory to which it had not only a claim based on the original Mandate plans, but much more importantly, it had a claim based on customary international law to retain territory from which another party had made constant war upon it. And the constant shelling, or threat of shelling, by the Syrians, on the Jewish villages lying far below the Golan Heights, over many years, certainly met the criteria for such long aggression. But here is an Israeli talking about how no regime in Syria is going to "make a gift" of the Golan. Does that phrase come near to adequately stating the case? Or does it show a strange inability to make the case for Israel, and a willingness, perhaps prompted by a defeatism born of mental laziness, to make the case for a country that, as long as it remains overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim, will be a permanent enemy, rude, savage, not to trust, no matter what smiles and wiles and guiles are temporarily employed to inveigle Israel into giving up the Golan.