When he was in the 12th grade, Tel Aviv native Zvi Hauser tried to found a secular group to settle the Golan Heights. The initiative collapsed thanks to bureaucracy, but Hauser had two ideological partners in childhood friends who were slightly older than he was – Gideon Saar, who would go on to become a government minister from the Likud party, and Eden Bar Tal, a former director general of the Communications Ministry.
"We were very naive," Hauser, 49, says in an interview with Israel Hayom's weekend magazine.
Since then, Hauser has racked up considerable mileage in public positions alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He served as the cabinet secretary, secretary of the Ministerial Committee on National Security and even as temporary director general of the Prime Minister's Office.
Now, as a senior research fellow with the Kohelet Policy Forum, Hauser is returning to his youthful passion, the Golan Heights, this time without the naivete. Along with his colleague Isaac Zarfati, Hauser recently published a groundbreaking document under a somewhat dry title: "Observations for National Strategy on the Golan Heights." Apart from documenting 1,600 years of Jewish population in the area in historical and Jewish sources, and carefully documenting the Zionist movement's attempts in its early years to gain a foothold on the Golan, Hauser and Zarfati describe Israel's presence on the Golan Heights in the 50 years since the 1967 Six-Day War as a colossal missed strategic opportunity and chance for settlement. No government gets a pass, not even Netanyahu's. Hauser's criticism of the army and political echelon's assessments and underlying assumptions is even harsher. He calls upon them to critique themselves.
Q: Critique themselves about what?
"There are two aspects to the historical blindness about the Golan. One has to do with apathy and continually missing our chances to secure the necessary and possible international recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan. Since the Six-Day War, every Israeli government saw there was a need to change the borders. We failed to do so with Egypt. We failed to do so with our unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip [in 2005]. But even today, not a single Israeli government has envisioned the 1967 border as the final peacetime border.
"In the past few years, we had a few chances to start a dialogue with the international community, particularly the U.S., about the Golan – to gain international recognition of our presence and sovereignty there. But the people who appraised the situation – and the diplomatic echelon followed them almost blindly – always saw the Golan as a temporary holding.
"The second aspect to that blindness is the total inaction in establishing facts on the ground on the Golan Heights when it comes to settlement. We aren't 'ruling over' any foreign people there – just 27,000 Druze, who are another missed opportunity for us. But there is still no Jewish majority on the Golan."
Q: Where did we miss strategic opportunities for international recognition of the Golan as Israeli?
"Syria falling apart in the last six years and the events in Iraq created, for the first time, a chance to hold international dialogue about the need to alter borders in the Middle East, to readjust the borders to the way of life and ethno-demographic distribution in the region. If we make the assumption – which I tend to believe that many today will agree with – that the Golan is the first place where the interests of the enlightened world and Israel are identical, and if we make the assumption that there is a Gordian knot that ties Israeli sovereignty on the Golan to halting Iran's aspirations and the Shiite axis of evil in the Middle East – we should have taken action. We didn't."
Q: When and how should we have acted?
"There were three notable opportunities. The first was in 2014, as part of the discussions with [then-U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry about the U.S. proposal for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. It was reported that in these talks, Israel showed willingness to make broad concessions. The discussion of security focused on the Jordan Valley, but as far as I know, Israel's security needs on the Golan were never discussed. The U.S. should have been presented with the following formula: Increasing our exposure to the Palestinians demands that we take long-term steps to decrease the risk to us from the Syrian front. We should have included the Golan Heights in the package.
"The second opportunity was when the Americans were negotiating with the Iranians on the nuclear deal [in 2015]. The Golan should have been compensation [for Israel]. Just before the decision was made, there was a notable lack of any Israeli demand not to be content with military or intelligence resources and instead try to secure a strategic win through American recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli. Israel should have been compensated strategically, not only tactically. This was another missed opportunity.
"The third opportunity, which I hope still exists, is with the Trump administration. This administration has more understanding of how dangerous Iran is than the previous one did. We could have gotten it to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. Our investment in the issue of Jerusalem is important, but I'm sorry to cause anyone sorrow – I suspect that it won't bear too much fruit when put to the test of time. In the current situation, the Golan is much more important. Recognition of our sovereignty there would have also had ramifications for the question of a permanent border for the Palestinian territories.
"The region is afraid that if Israel doesn't take action now to secure international recognition of its presence on the Golan, the equation could change, and – heaven forbid – it could find itself in a situation where the equation is: Iranian withdrawal from Syria in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. No one wants to wind up there," Hauser says.
Learning the lessons of Eilat and Kiryat Gat
To demonstrate that his claim that American recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan isn't a pipe dream, Hauser points to two highly significant revelations from the first Netanyahu government.
"Netanyahu asked [then-U.S. Secretary of State] Warren Christopher to specify in writing that Israel was not obligated to [former Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin's promise about the Golan, and got it," the researcher says.
Rabin had sent the Syrians a message that implementation of a full withdrawal, as stipulated in the peace treaty with Egypt, applied to the Golan Heights, as well.
"Netanyahu also asked for and received a renewed confirmation in writing of a commitment former President Gerald Ford made in a letter to Rabin in 1975, that the U.S. would give major consideration to Israel's position that any peace agreement with Syria must include Israel remaining on the Golan Heights," Hauser says.
Q: All well and good, but still, you include testimony from Frederic Hof, who was the go-between for Israel and Syria in 2011, in your research. According to Hof, Netanyahu agreed to pay the price of a withdrawal from the Golan if Syria would cut off its anti-Israel relationship with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and refrain from attacking or threatening Israel.
"Hof was involved, so we thought it was right to include his testimony. In recent months, I see different intentions and declarations from the prime minister. For example, in Munich this week, [he said] that the Golan Heights is and will remain part of Israel."
Q: Nevertheless, you talk about a missed opportunity for settlement.
"Indeed. This is the second aspect of the historical blindness – 36 years after the Golan Heights Law was passed, Israel still hasn't managed to reach a Jewish majority there. Today, some 50,000 people live there, about 22,000 Jews and 27,000 Druze. The [only] growth is just natural population increase. But in fact, for many years every aspect of demographic growth has been frozen.
"400,000 Jews have settled in Judea and Samaria. The Golan Heights is home to less than 5% of the number of Jews in Judea and Samaria. Even when we compare the rate of growth of settlement on the Golan in the past 50 years to the growth rate in periphery cities in Israel, the gap is noticeable. In the same time that Israel settled 22,000 people on the Golan, Eilat [at the southernmost tip of Israel] grew by 39,000, and cities like Nahariya and Kiryat Gat gained 33,000 residents each. This is a chillingly poor performance by all the Israeli governments, including the recent ones, and proof of an ongoing historical failure."
Q: Could it be that settlement isn't really important to Netanyahu – that he doesn't see it as significant?
"The prime minister justifiably places importance on international recognition, on an international charter, and not just changing the reality through settlement. In this sense, Netanyahu is Herzl-like [in his views]."
A few years ago, Hauser gave Haaretz reporter Ari Shavit a more detailed answer, in which he referenced the monumental article by Netanyahu's father, Professor Benzion Netanyahu, about Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl. Hauser told Shavit that the key issue for Herzl was international recognition of the historic rights of the Jewish people, and less interest in getting hold of another dunam of land or another tree. "The mounds of earth of Nahalal … or Yitzhar are not part of the prime minister's emotional core," Hauser said in that interview.
There is little doubt that Hauser's "emotional core" lies with settlement. Despite this, most of his efforts, both in research and in his activity as chairman of the Coalition for the Israeli Golan – which he founded a few months ago – is devoted to promoting strategic change. Hauser wants to remove the idea of the Golan as a "temporary holding" from the public perception.
"I sat in on closed-door meetings where the best and brightest described [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad as a reliable partner, someone with whom we could close a deal: peace in exchange for [Israel] withdrawing to the Sea of Galilee. This is no secret; back then a lot of people were talking about it publicly. They should critique themselves. There was almost a national-strategic accident here. In my time as cabinet secretary, I never learned of any process to draw conclusions in an attempt to understand how the Israeli appraisals of the situation wound up where they did," Hauser says.
Q: Why are you exempting the political echelon from responsibility?
"The political echelon didn't know how to build an appropriate system of strategic discussion, either. What has happened in Syria these past few years is a watershed event. When I evaluate the thinking and the strategic achievements of the three regional powers operating on the ground, Iran and Turkey get better marks than Israel. In recent years, we've focused on the process rather than the result.
"Israel has outstanding tactical military capabilities, which time after time prove how necessary and superior they are. But these capabilities create an optical illusion and allow the diplomatic echelon to suffice with preening itself on tactical successes and put off any geostrategic discussion as superfluous. Paradoxically, it leaves the question of Golan Heights as a temporary holding open for the next stage. Our lack of decisiveness about the Golan also influences the Druze who live there. Some of them are still on the fence, and their loyalties are divided between Israel and Syria.
Q: Is that still the perception? That the Golan is open to the next stage?
"I'm not sure the military system has changed its worldview from what it was up until the Syrian civil war broke out. I'm not sure that it doesn't still see the Golan Heights as a 'deposit' until peace time. The political echelon is keeping the Golan Heights at the status of a deposit, too. That is the sad fact that our research shows – that absolutely nothing is being done to establish facts on the ground on the Golan Heights."
Create total certainty
Hauser and Zarfati's research takes us a considerable way back in time. The two conducted a historical analysis of maps, which demonstrated that some of the territory in the Golan Heights, which has been under Israeli control since 1967, were supposed to have been included within the borders of the Jewish national homeland from the beginning, when the British Mandate over the Holy Land ended. This includes a considerable section of the territory north of the city of Katzrin.
The two also document a large amount of land – tens of thousands of dunams – that Baron de Rothschild purchased in Houran (in southwestern Syria) in the second half of the 19th century, as well as a failed attempt to establish a Jewish settlement in Houran from 1895-1901. "The official State of Israel never laid claim to its right to the land that Jews settled in Houran. It never proposed any possible deal in which it would concede its ownership rights to the Houran land in exchange for recognition of its rights to the land of the Golan Heights," they wrote.
Hauser says that 50 years after the Six-Day War, any Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights would violate an "unwritten contract" between the state and its citizens that was supposed to have created "absolute certainty" among the Israeli public about Israel's geographic, cultural and national identity, "in the most basic sense of a people returning to its land."
"Any government that decides on a withdrawal like that must understand that the long-term costs of breaking social harmony and attacking national strength in the long run are very high, that it would comprise a significant crack to certainty and that same unwritten contract between the state and its citizens."
These are difficult times for Hauser, who spent many years at Netanyahu's side. He resigned as cabinet secretary in 2013. More than four years later, Hauser is having a hard time with the investigations into corruption involving Netanyahu and the Israel Police's recommendations that the prime minister be tried in two of the cases. He has little to say in response to questions about them.
Q: Were you surprised by the police recommendations?
"I'm not sure that's the word. On one hand, the matters aren't simple at all. We shouldn't be dismissive about them, but on the operative level – when it comes to everyone involved – presumption of innocence is tested in difficult times. There is no doubt that these are difficult moments, so I think that for now the right thing to do is to show as much restraint as possible and stick to the rules of the game, as well as the current system.
Q: Are you all right with the prime minister's statement that if he is indicted, he will continue to serve?
"I'm not sure I'm the right person to judge things. But everything should be examined at the right place and the right time."
