This formula has become so politically correct that few in government seem to question the wisdom of exchanging a vital strategic asset for a treaty with a dictator who has never kept an agreement. The relinquishment of the Golan is now taken for granted, and those who warn that it may invite war are dubbed enemies of peace. It seems incredible that only seven years ago Yitzhak Rabin declared that abandoning the Golan would be tantamount to forsaking Israel's security. Nothing has changed since then, except that now the notion that a peace agreement is in itself the ultimate strategic asset, a notion which should never be applied to aggressive dictatorships, has become the conventional wisdom. As Rabin put it, the depth of withdrawal will be determined by the depth of the peace.
Full withdrawal can only materialize if security arrangements are airtight.
It is a proposition which ignores the wholly understandable penchant of American troops to retreat, as they did in Lebanon and Somalia, in response to terrorist attacks. The only minister in Barak's government who seems to understand the folly of seeking peace by coddling dictators is Interior Minister Natan Sharansky. Having spent nine years in the Soviet Gulag, he knows the nature of the beast from bitter personal experience. In a recent lecture in Washington he suggested that instead of making Israeli withdrawals contingent on unobtainable normalization goals or reversible security arrangements, Israel should link its concessions to democratization. Advocates of instant peace, including the administration, strenuously object to this approach.