"I had to chuckle at the description by Teribus that Syria had a secret facility near the Turkish border.Since when has any military facility ever been anything other than secret?" - Albert

Try Portsmouth Dockyard, Albert - Currently the military facility that serves as "Home to the Royal Navy" it is also a recognised historic site open to the public and the location of the first mass production assembly line anywhere in the world. There are quite a few others, so please feel free to chuckle on.

I take from your reticence on the subject that the "alarming" prospect of the "possibility of an American attack on Iran" is just one of your own pet "bogey-men" and that your prediction of it happening before Bush leaves office is hogwash, based on nothing except your own biased outlook.

Now the Golan:

In 2005 the Golan Heights had a population of approximately 38,900, including approximately 19,300 Druze, 16,500 Jews, and 2,100 Muslims

The Palestinian organization Fatah began raids into Israeli territory in early 1965, with active support from Syria. At first the guerillas entered via Lebanon or Jordan, but those countries made concerted attempts to stop them and raids directly from Syria increased.

Israel's response was a series of retaliatory raids, of which the largest were an attack on the Jordanian village of Samu in November 1966, and in April 1967, after Syria heavily shelled Israeli villages from the Golan Heights, Israel shot down six of Syria's MiG fighter planes, provided by the Soviet Union. Israel warned Syria against future attacks.

Before the Six-Day War, the strategic heights of the Golan, which are approximately 3,000 feet (1,000 m) above the bordering Hulah Valley in Israel, were used to frequently bombard civilian Israeli farming communities far below them, although Moshe Dayan (Israeli Defense Minister during the 1967 war) would later state that it was often the result of Israeli provocations in the demilitarized zone.

According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, former Israeli General Mattityahu Peled claimed that more than half of the border clashes before the 1967 war "were a result of our security policy of maximum settlement in the demilitarized area" (Please note it was a demilitarized area - settlement within that area was not prohibited). Syrian attacks killed 140 Israelis and injured many more from 1949 to 1967.

In May 1967 before the Six-Day War of 1967, Hafez Assad, then Syria's Defense Minister declared: "Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian Army, with its finger on the trigger, is united... I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." ("..the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation" Eh? By God that's defensive fightin' talk if ever I've heard it - right CarolC?)

In June 2007, approximately 40 years following the Six Day War in which Israel took over the Golan Heights, it was reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had sent a secret message to Syrian President, Bashar Assad saying that Israel would return the land in exchange for a comprehensive peace agreement and the severing of Syria's ties with Iran and terror groups in the region. Meanwhile, on the same day, former Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the former Syrian President, Hafez Assad had promised to give him Mount Hermon in any agreement.

Now here we come the strange part, because with the Golan everybody seems to be talking about different lines:

- The 1967 Line which Syria wants as it allows Syria to keep land it took by force and occupied in 1948.
- The 1923 Line which Israel wants to use but Syria rejects because it was drawn up the League of Nations and does not give them a shore on the Sea of Galilee
- The 1949 Armistice Line which Syria objects to as it does not give Syria water frontage on the Sea of Gallilea

The map shows the differences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GolanHistoricalBorders.svg

For all those who seem to advocate Israeli withdrawal from the Golan to the pre-Six-Day War boundaries on the basis that it is land taken by force of arms. Can you explain why it is therefore perfectly acceptable that Syria is entitled to retain land taken by force of arms?

If the answer has got anything to do with time Israel has occupied the land they took for about twice as long as the Syrians occupied the land they took in 1948.