THE GOLAN HEIGHTS ARE MOVING TOWARD ISRAEL

IS GEOLOGY DESTINY?

HAARETZ:

... for the past million years, the Golan has been moving slowly toward Israel.

The northern city of Kiryat Shmona and the Golan Heights are just a few kilometers apart geographically. But from a geological perspective, they are worlds apart. The Golan is part of the Arabian geological plate, which also includes Jordan, Syria and the Arabian peninsula. Kiryat Shmona, however, is part of the Galilee, which is in turn part of the Sinai plate, connected to Africa. Some 20 million years ago, the two plates began to move opposite one another. This movement, which continues today, created the Syrian-African Rift, along which the Dead Sea and Lake Kinneret are located.

Geologists had said for years that the Arabian plate is slipping northward relative to Israel, and at the same time, it is separating from it and moving east. According to this theory, Amman and Jerusalem are moving apart at the rate of a few tenths of a millimeter a year. But new research, which was recently published in the scientific journal Tectonics, paints a different picture: According to satellite surveys, the Golan is actually moving toward the Galilee.

"What we've now found is that a million years ago changes began to take place in the plates north of the Kinneret," says Dr. Ram Weinberger of the Geological Survey of Israel. In the area of the Hula Valley, Kiryat Shmona and Metulla, Weinberger says, the plates are moving closer.

"Relative to Kiryat Shmona, Katzrin is moving northward, but also westward," Weinberger said, referring to the city in the central Golan Heights.

I GUESS G-D WANTS THE GOLAN TO BE IN ISRAEL...