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(Golan councils’ website)
Both areas are idyllic yet disputed strips of land in Israel which have captured the international headlines. Both are home to several thousand families and are contested by Jews and Arabs alike. Jewish inhabitants of both areas are mostly farmers who moved there after 1967.
Some see them as pioneers who are bravely protecting Israel’s borders. Others see in them a nuisance and an obstacle to the peace process.
Many parallels can be drawn between the bloc of Jewish communities in Gaza and its northern reflection, the Golan Heights.
After this summer, there will be nothing to compare. More than 1,600 Jewish families will be evacuated from their homes in Gaza under Israel’s Gaza withdrawal plan. Yet it seems the event has no bearing on the situation in the Golan. The steady influx of new residents to this strip of land is continuing, and life carries on as normal.
“The soil isn’t burning under our feet,” said Daniella Shaul, a veteran journalist who has lived in the Golan for 23 years, and now resides in the Golan’s largest Jewish community, Katzrin.
The Golan is a plateau on the border of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. It spans about 1,158 square kilometers (447 square miles), fitting twice into Rhode Island, with room to spare.
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(www.worldatlas.com)
With its vast green pastures and crisp fresh air, the Golan is an important asset for Israel, not only because of the quality of living it provides for its residents but also because of its natural and strategic benefits, particularly in water resources and security.
It is currently home to an estimated 35,000 people – 18,000 Jews in 33 communities and 17,000 Druze, according to the Golan Regional Council.
Within a month of Israel’s capturing the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 War (Six Day War), Israeli Jews were driven there in order to secure Israel’s new borders by populating the area and making a mark.
In 1981, the Israeli government passed the Golan Heights Law which applied Israel’s laws, jurisdiction and administration to it. This law was never applied to the West Bank and Gaza, so the areas have a different status.
The United Nations does not acknowledge the Golan Heights Law and views the Golan as land occupied by Israel.
Throughout the 1990s successive Israeli governments placed the Golan on the negotiating table between Israel and Syria, each time generating a huge public outcry against any concessions on the Golan. The movement supporting the Golan is best remembered for the catchy slogan, ‘Ha’am Im Hagolan’ (‘The People are with the Golan’), which till this day is paraphrased into other slogans for different purposes.
Eventually, negotiations fell through, the Golan remained in Israel’s hands, and the danger of its residents being evacuated blew over.
Due to their recent turbulent history, Golan residents can sympathize with the families who are expected to be evacuated from Gaza on August 15.
The Golan has been launching vast campaigns to encourage people to populate this land since 2001. But the Golan Regional Council said they are not targeting the future evacuees with any campaigns, so as not to look as if they are profiteering from the evacuees’ misfortune.
The Golan’s disputed status, it appears, has not affected the arrival of people to this area. The residents themselves, unlike in the tumultuous 1990s, also feel no imminent danger.
Around 250 families will move to the Golan this year, according to David Spellman, head of the Population Department at the Golan Regional Council.
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(Dudi Saad)
It is reasonable to assume that families will think twice about moving to a disputed piece of land after seeing Gaza evacuated, but Spellman said even if this is the case, it has not been apparent in the past year and a half, since the plan to evacuate Gaza was first proposed.
“Over the past 10-15 years we’ve always been asked questions,” Spellman said. “People always ask ‘what will happen if?’ This has always been the case and it still is,” he explained. “If they have concerns, we tell them whatever happens to you will also happen to us.”
The Golan Regional Council insists that incentives offered to move to the Golan are minimal. People are drawn there because of the quality of living, not for tax reductions or additional benefits, they said.
One such adventurer is Shlomi Shraga, an engineer who currently lives in the center of Israel.
Shraga, his wife Michal, a lawyer, and their four children, are moving to the Golan at the end of August, shortly after the withdrawal from Gaza begins. They started thinking about moving up north a couple of years ago, with no ideological motives in mind, simply to up their standard of living.
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(Golan councils’ website)
The Gaza withdrawal had no impact on their decision, Shraga said, but he said it does linger at the back of the mind. “When a person moves home, there are some heavy economic decisions at hand and that’s in the background,” he said.
Shraga said he does not believe the Golan will be handed over to the Syrians the way Gaza is being given to the Palestinians. “First of all, the legal situation is different,” he explained. “The Golan Heights isn’t the same status as the territories and if there is a withdrawal I don’t think the state of Israel will be capable of compensating all the residents.”
Still, Shraga is not ruling out the possibility that he may one day be made to leave his home under an agreement with Syria. He is already making the appropriate provisions.
“I’m keeping all the invoices so that if we have to leave there will be no argument as to what I invested here,” he said.
Daniella Shaul, the Katzrin journalist, opposes the withdrawal but does not feel it will have a direct impact on the Golan. She fears more for the indirect consequences. “The problem is, I think they’re strengthening the precedent with this withdrawal. Personally, the disengagement for me is expelling people from their houses,” she said, noting an apparent difficulty with the sterile term ‘disengagement.’ “I think that taking people out of their homes is beyond the limits of democracy.”
Elana Weltsch, a Golan resident since 1979, does not see the parallels between the Golan and Gaza.
Weltsch is active in the pro-withdrawal movement Shuvi, consisting primarily of mothers of soldiers who are concerned about the lives that have been lost during Israel’s presence in Gaza.
Unlike the Jews living in Gaza, she said, Golan residents do not live within an Arab population and do not feel a confrontation between the two people. “Here we don’t lock our houses. [In Gaza] children go to school under heavy security,” Weltsch said.
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Mashoshim pool in the Golan (Rina Nagila)
Yigal Kipnis from Ma’aleh Gamla is also in favor of the withdrawal. He moved to the Golan 27 years ago, motivated by personal reasons. “I think the Gaza withdrawal is coming 30 years too late, but it’s an important step for Israeli society,” said Kipnis, who has written a university doctorate on the Jewish settlement process in the Golan after 1967.
Kipnis noted there is a correlation between what is happening in Gaza and the Golan, but also noted the differences. The Golan issue is between Israel and Syria, two states with clear borders. But the division of the West Bank and Gaza is not between two states but between two nations, he said.
Contrary to popular slogans that the Gaza withdrawal is splitting the people, Kipnis maintains quite the opposite. “The evacuation unites the people,” he said.
“Fighting to protect Israel’s borders that have broad public acceptance, such as Israel without Gaza, is more uniting than fighting when there are communities in the Gaza Strip that are disputed.”
The fact that he himself is living on disputed territory does not bother Kipnis. “I’m on occupied land, but I’m not obstructing any political process and no soldiers need to protect my community.”
Oded Porat, a 32-year-old educator from the Golan’s Ramat Magshimim, has a different opinion on the pullout. Porat is an opponent of the Gaza withdrawal and active in the local Golan struggle against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to evacuate Gaza. He was born on the Golan, has lived there most of his life, and is now raising a family there.
Porat talked of a kindred spirit between Golan and Gaza residents and the striking similarities between the two populations. “We also had to deal with an expulsion plan masqueraded as a diplomatic agreement,” he said, referring to the talks about handing over the Golan in the 1990s. “We understand more than anyone else the meaning of settling and connecting to the soil.”
But he does not fear the pullout will have a direct effect on the Golan. “I fear for the fate of the whole of Israel. We’re not talking about the interests of a small group. The struggle isn’t personal, it’s for the whole of Israel.”
Porat illustrated the Golan as an inactive volcano. The situation was perhaps precarious in the past, but no longer. “Today we feel the Golan is the safest place in Israel,” he said.
In the Golan, views on the Gaza withdrawal are diverse, much like they are in the rest of Israel. The fact that these people are living on disputed land, does not necessarily designate them into a particular political persuasion, although most seem to agree that the ‘orange’ movement, the color associated with withdrawal opponents, is more vocal.
Shaul said the Golan’s national-religious population, their hallmark being the crocheted skullcap, is opposed to the withdrawal. But beyond that, the general inclination of whether Golan residents are in favor of the pullout or against it is uncertain.
Porat and Kipnis, who have opposing views about the withdrawal, both contend that the majority of Golan residents is on their side.