Results for “Golan”

…der was an equally forbidding figure. Avraham Yoffe had served in the British artillery in the Second World War and the Golani Brigade in 1948. He used to joke with other officers that while they looked like a bunch of kids, he was the only one with the true bearing of a general....

…ches of the Jordan River, an important water source for Israel was well. In a series of exchanges, Syrian troops on the Golan fired on Israeli tractors in the demilitarized zone below, and began shelling our argicultural settlements in the Galilee, while we responded with tank fi...

…f Lebanon. I’d met their Syrian inhabitants when I helped “capture” the villages at the very end of the 1973 war on the Golan. When Syria now publicly supported Hizbollah’s efforts to get the UN to say the area was in fact part of Lebanon, I decided to call their bluff. Through t...

… the same reason I’d escaped being locked up on General Yoffe’s orders as a gasoline thief. Had we been captured on the Golan, the very future of the sayeret as an operational intelligence unit would have been put at risk. Tzur, and Ben-Gurion as well, would have faced a reopenin...

…t Assad was holding firm on his insistence that without our “deposit,” without a prior agreement that he’d get back the Golan, there could be no substantive progress. This was particularly frustrating because I was getting reports from our intelligence services, and 329 HOUSE_OV...

… compensation for the rest. On the Syrian front, Israel would be expected to withdraw to the June 4, 1967 line, but the Golan would be demilitarized, agreements on water would be worked out, and Syria would be expected to use its influence to help promote a comprehensive Arab–Isr...

… a source of inspiration, and a call for action. The Yoni who rebuilt a tank battalion reduced to ashes and dust on the Golan. And there was the Yoni at peace. Tranquil. At home. With his pipe and his phonograph records, out of uniform. We saw him in his hours of supreme achievem...

… an extremely serious war. Syrian tanks are getting close to the outer fences of Nafakh” — our main command post on the Golan. “Good luck.” Uzi was waiting for me when we landed. Walking to his car, we ran into two reserve armored officers who had also just arrived home. They ex...

…a, he asked me to unfold the map I'd brought with me and talk him through, step by step, how we planned to get onto the Golan, plant the bugging device, and get back 66 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011537

…tly after I returned to the kirya, he provoked further anger in Washington by announcing the de facto annexation of the Golan — in effect “balancing” our Sinai withdrawal with a dramatic reassertion of Israeli control over other land captured in the 1967 war. Part of Arik’s plan...

… agreement, though politically difficult, was also more straightforward. We knew what Assad wanted: the recovery of the Golan Heights, in return for the absolute minimum level of political normalization with Israel. We knew what we wanted: security guarantees and assurances regar...

… an extremely serious war. Syrian tanks are getting close to the outer fences of Nafakh” — our main command post on the Golan. “Good luck.” Uzi was waiting for me when we landed. Walking to his car, we ran into two reserve armored officers who had also just arrived home. They ex...

… — armies we’d not just defeated, but humiliated, six years earlier — had pinned down and pushed back our forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on...

…rael controlled had more than tripled. It included the whole Sinai Desert, up to the edge of the Suez Canal. The entire Golan. The ancient lands of Judaea and Samaria: the West Bank. And the reunited capital city of Jerusalem. Suddenly, we had a sense that we could breathe. Wand...

… was because of my history in Sayeret Matkal. Other Israeli sayerets were attached to specific fighting forces. Sayeret Golan, for instance, was part of the Golani infantry brigade in the north; Sayeret 7zanhanim, was part of the paratroopers. But “matkal” is the Hebrew word for...