Report Five : Exploring the Dual Narratives of the Golan

Saturday, August 6, 2005

In describing the thinking behind Gush Shalom’s booklet, “Truth Against Truth,” Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery explains that the Israeli and Palestinian national narratives not only offer competing historical accounts of their conflict, but also contradict one another on nearly every point of their shared history. 

Nowhere is the fact of conflicting narratives truer than regarding the Golan Heights on Israel’s northeast border with Syria. The Golan (or ‘Jawlan’ in Arabic) province has been a part of Syria since at least 1920, when France was given a mandate over what would become Syria.

During the 1967 War, the Golan Heights was captured by Israel. Most of the population of 130,000 fled to Syria. Those remaining consisted almost entirely of Druze, an offshoot of Islam with population concentrated in the mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The Golan is often left out of discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though its future is the sticking point preventing an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty.

Three members of our delegation previously visited the Golan with more conventional Jewish or Christian tour groups and guides. Both Jews and Christians heard the same story: from 1948 to 1967 the Syrians repeatedly fired on Jewish farms below the Golan Heights; in 1967 the Israelis won a heroic military victory over a heavily-armed and well-entrenched Syrian Army; and, the occasional ruins one now sees are former military barracks and positions of the Syrian army. We even heard the same story about how the Israeli spy Eli Cohen  (the ‘hero’ of the book Our Man in Damascus), operating as an Arab in Damascus, told Syrian engineers to plant Eucalyptus trees near the bunkers and how the Israeli planes and artillery later used the trees to identify military targets.

We heard quite a different tale from Salman Fahkr Din, a Druze from the town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights. Salman met us on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, near the former border between Israel and Syria. From the bus, he first pointed to an Israeli sign indicating an archeological site. Until 1967, this had been the Syrian village of Kursi. The village was destroyed immediately after the war, according to Fahkr Din, because it was the site of a water pump that provided water to nearby Syrian villages. Now visitors see a sixth century historical Byzantine site and no mention of the village that was destroyed.

Fahkr Din provided us with some background. For example, even though the United Nations declared a cease-fire on June 9, 1967, the Israelis attacked the Golan Heights a day later on June 10th. His research revealed that only 47 Syrians (36 soldiers and 11 civilians) were killed in the “war” over the Golan. He said so few casualties indicates, “No war took place.” The Golan invasion had instead been planned long before. The order to attack was given by Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Dayan. This preserved “plausible deniability” for the army’s command structure in the event of investigation into how the attack was launched after the cease-fire.

Salman’s account brought to mind a statement by Moshe Dayan in a series of interviews conducted in 1976 and later published in Yediot Ahronot after his death in 1981. Moshe Dayan confessed that his greatest mistake as Minister of Defense was that in June 1967, he did not stick to his original opposition to storming the Golan Heights. He described how the confrontation with the Syrian evolved into war:

Never mind that [when asked whether Syrians initiated the war from the Golan           Heights]. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.

And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was. I did that, and Laskov and Chara [Zvi Tsur, Rabin's predecessor as chief of staff] did that, Yitzhak did that, but it seems to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado David Elzar, OC Northern Command, 1964-69] (quoted in Avi Shlaim, Iron Wall,  p. 236-237).

According to Fahkr Din, the placing of thousands of Israeli civilians in settlements in the captured territory after 1967 made the security claim ludicrous. Israeli civilians are just as close to the Syrian army as they were before the war.

As for Eli Cohen, Salman said the Eucalyptus trees are older than the Israeli spy and could not have been planted at his suggestion. Many bombs dropped on Eucalyptus trees in fact damaged civilian structures. Tourists visiting the Golan Heights may be left with the impression that the land was a series of Syrian fortifications but the residents know it was a thriving agricultural region with many civilian villages and towns.

In the former village of Chushnieh, we climbed a minaret, pock-marked with bullet holes, above an abandoned and badly damaged mosque. Salman suggested we make a mental picture of the largely abandoned lands in all directions. A half hour later, from a vantage point over the 1974 de-militarized zone into Syria, we could see many villages. Recalling our mental image, Salman explained the now sparsely populated Golan Heights had even more population centers before the Israeli occupation in 1967, since it was closer to the sources of water, though it appears very pastoral and abandoned now.

A Druze student visiting home from his graduate studies in New York said that during the 1967 War, many Druze and Arabs from surrounding villages sought refuge in Majdal Shams. After the war, the Druze were allowed to return to their homes. The Sunni Arabs, on the other hand, were not allowed to return to their homes and villages. Within ten days their villages had been leveled. They are now refugees in Syria.

A case in point: We stopped in Fiq, a city of more than 10,000 at the time of the 1967 War. It now consists of scattered ruins. Referring to current media accounts of the trauma being caused Jewish settlers being evicted from Gaza, Salman asked, “What about the trauma of the Arabs of the Golan who were forced out of their homes?” Behind him we could see the ruins of a high school and a middle school that served the region before 1967.

More than 30 civilian Jewish settlements now dotting the Golan Heights are evidence enough for Fahkr Din that Israel captured the area, not for security reasons, but for the fertile lands and water. Today, Jewish residents of the Golan are allocated 5-10 times more water per dunam (or quarter acre) than the Druze living in the same area.

After their access to the abundant water resources of the Golan Heights was restricted under Israeli occupation, the Druze developed an ingenious system of large round metal cisterns to capture the rainfall. Israel instituted a series of permits that had to be secured from five different governmental agencies before additional cisterns could be constructed. No new cisterns have been built since 1982. In addition, the Israelis imposed a tax on the water in the cisterns and a usage charge that is three times what the Jewish settlements pay for water. The Golani Druze thus pay not only for the water they use but also for the water infrastructure in the region, even though the cisterns are not part of the water grid and only collect falling rainwater.

As we traversed the Golan, themes familiar from our observations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem became obvious, including Israel’s taking control over water resources and preventing civilians from returning to their homes after hostilities end.

In Majdal Shams, we saw minefields around Israeli outposts abutting residential neighborhoods. Salman showed us the “Fence of Shouts” where families communicate by megaphones across the border to Syria. An Irish volunteer described the work of a new human rights center that opened in Majdal Shams. We also visited a cultural center and art exhibition at a café run by the Druze to support the center and various community activities. We enjoyed an evening of music at the café. After several songs by a Druze guitarist, members of the delegation were asked to respond with stories or songs from North America. Over dinner, a graduate student characterized the six-month civil disobedience of the Golani Druze in 1982 against imposition of Israeli identity cards as a highlight of their communal life since 1967. The struggle helped the Druze to forge their identity as Syrians and strengthened their resolve to resist the Israeli occupation. He talked about the current crisis of Druze identity among the young people on the Golan, as they are increasingly integrated into the Israeli economy and their ties to Syria weaken.

There are hopeful signs. The partial withdrawal and ceasefire negotiated by Henry Kissinger in 1974 has held through two Israeli invasions, two Gulf Wars, two Intifadas and continuing strife between Israel, the Palestinians and Israel’s  Arab neighbors.

We stayed at a beautiful guesthouse on the second level of Majdal Shams, a town with steps up the side of the slopes of Mount Hermon. We won’t soon forget the array of foods, the animated conversations and the swiftly moving clouds and brisk air as we ate breakfast on a deck overlooking Majdal Shams and much of the Golan Heights the next morning.

Few groups visit the Golan. For our part, we found the people very welcoming, the scenery extraordinarily beautiful, the dynamics of the occupation all too familiar and the visit well worthwhile.

-- Submitted by Scott Kennedy for the delegation