Want to make a hit? To acquire a villa in the Galilee practically for nothing? To double your money within two or three years? To make a sure bet? Go and buy houses on the Golan heights. Quick!

Israel is going to quit the heights. If not tomorrow, then on the day after. In order to make it easier, the Prime Minister is going to bribe the settlers with huge compensations.

The clever ones among the settlers are already trying to make arrangements. They are discreetly gathering information about appropriate places in the Galilee. One of the Kibbutz movements is already preparing the transfer. Others have hired lawyers. Just in case.

At the last elections, the public has spoken unequivocally. The "Third way" election list, which was adopted by the leadership of the Golan settlers, got just 26,290 votes, much less than the minimum required for a seat, less than the personal list of a well-known glamour girl. All the other lists that supported the Golan settlements were soundly beaten. The Israeli voter just decided that he was fed up with the settlements, that it is far more important to get out of Lebanon and to prevent war with Syria, which is able to rain chemical and biological missiles on the towns of Israel.

I try to pity the Golan settlers. It ain't easy.

Of course, they are not fanatics like the Gush Emunim people on the West Bank. They don't hold on to the beard of the Messiah. They were just looking for "quality of life" and fell in love with the beautiful landscape. Ay, there's the rub.

Every settler on the Golan knew fully well that he is sitting on land stolen by force from human beings vegetating in refugee camps only some tens of miles from them. Some 150 thousand men, women and children were living on the Golan heights before the occupation, as did their forefathers for generations. Some of us remember the lights blinking on the Golan heights opposite Tiberias. Some time ago I met in Europe a Palestinian writer, member of a well-known family, who fled in 1948 to Syria and earned his living as a teacher on the Golan. He told me about the teeming life in the villages there. An observant traveler can still discover the remnants of these villages hidden behind trees and bushes.

One needs a lot of insensitivity in order to find "quality of life" on the ruins of the lives of tens of thousands of human beings. Therefore, the settlers are in need of alibis. "All the Israeli government have sent us here." Indeed? Nobody was "sent", except the soldiers sent to defend them. The settlers went there on their own free will, like the gamblers who go these days to the casino in Jericho. They exerted immense pressure on the Israeli governments, which were compelled to bow to their will.

Further: "The Syrians have shelled the kibbuzim from the heights and given them hell for many years." Not exactly. Israeli historians have already discovered that most of the border incidents before 1967 were provoked by our side, in order to take possession of the disputed lands in the "demilitarized zone". Ariel Sharon was a master of this game.

And further: "The Golan heights are essential for the security of Israel." Nonsense. In the era of Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian missiles, the strategic value of the Golan is nil.

So what remains? There remain the sorrow and disappointment of thousands of Israeli families that built their life there. They will have to start a new life in Israel. The state must help them. I do not say: They have gambled and lost, now it's their own business. In my opinion, the successive governments of Israel bear a part of the responsibility, because they have encouraged the settlers, manipulated them for their ends and bowed to their whims. The government must buy their properties and pay fair compensations. With some luck, the government will be able to sell them to the Syrians. If it does not allow the angel of destruction, Ariel Sharon, to devastate Katzrin as he has devastated Yamit.

Some settlers still dream of "renting the area from the Syrians" or of staying on under Syrian rule. That's pathetic. In Syria, 150 thousand refugees are waiting for the day when they can go home - to their homes that will be rebuilt or to the homes of the settlers.

The area will go back to what it was before 1967: the "Syrian heights". That's what we called them then, and that's what they will be called again. If everything will work out, we will visit the Hermon mountain as we are visiting Nueiba, which was given back to Egypt. Who knows, maybe the Syrians will build a casino in Katzrin, as the Egyptians did in Taba and the Palestinians in Jericho.