Fate of Golan residents linked to peace talks

Vita Bekker, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: June 08. 2008 11:39PM UAE / June 8. 2008 7:39PM GMT

The Golan Heights has been settled by Israelis like Anat Bar-On, who believes she will not have to move. Ilan Mizrahi for The National

GOLAN HEIGHTS // When Anat Bar-On first heard about Israel’s renewed peace talks with Syria, she was alarmed.

After all, she, her husband and their three children just moved in August into a sprawling, two-storey house overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s largest freshwater lake. They quickly settled into the pastoral lifestyle offered by their new community, Had Nes, whose perks also included a pool, organised nature trips as well as subsidised kindergartens and after-school activities.

But there is one potential problem: their home is located in the Golan Heights, an area seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community. Syria wants the return of all of the Golan Heights as part of any future peace agreement, which would mean the moving of the 21,000 Israeli Jews living in the region.

Still, Mrs Bar-On said she is no longer as concerned about losing her home. “I’m new and I got nervous – but the veteran residents here aren’t taking the new talks seriously,” said the green-eyed, 37-year-old mother, as she relaxed on the dark leather couch in her spacious living room and nibbled on a piece of poppy seed cake. Outside, tractors and building crews were busy constructing new houses for other Jewish families slated to settle in the community in coming months. “The neighbours say this issue comes up every few years, but nothing ever happens,” she said.

Indeed, Israel and Syria have held talks intermittently since the 1990s, with the highest level negotiations breaking down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan. Last month, the two longtime enemies announced they had begun indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey, the first confirmation of negotiations in eight years.

But the prospect of Israel possibly giving up the Golan has not kept Jews away from the verdant, mountainous region. In fact, in recent years an average of about 250 Jewish families settled in the region annually, typically attracted to the rural scenery and government economic incentives to settle in the area, most notably free plots on which to build houses.

The Golan is also a popular tourist destination for many Israelis. The region is filled with hiking trails, waterfalls, bed-and-breakfasts, wineries, quaint art shops, horse farms and the country’s only ski slopes. It is also a fertile cattle-grazing area and major Israeli producer of agricultural products, with groves of citrus fruit and olives, vineyards and flower fields. Few Israelis refer to Golan residents – many of them secular and mainstream rather than ideological or religious extremists – as settlers, a term used widely for Jews who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Golan’s popularity could make it hard for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, to sell a withdrawal politically. Furthermore, even some members of Mr Olmert’s own party, Kadima, have spoken out against the plan. Last week, Shaul Mofaz, the minister of transportation and a deputy prime minister, toured the Golan and declared he opposed an Israeli withdrawal. The Tehran-born Mr Mofaz said it was possible to achieve peace with Syria without returning the territory, and that “the significance of handing the Golan to the Syrians is [putting] Iranians in the Golan”. Mr Mofaz – who hopes to replace Mr Olmert, who is battling legal troubles, should he resign – added that he intended to come live in the Golan with his family.

While it is a popular holiday spot, the Golan is scattered with reminders of past wars, including rusted tanks, mine fields and derelict, graffiti-covered barracks. While the region, bordered by Syria and Jordan to the east and Lebanon to the west, has been relatively tranquil since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, speculation of war occasionally leads each country to heighten security.

But some have pointed out that the strategic plateau is not indispensable to Israel. Dan Halutz, Israel’s army chief during the 2006 war with Hizbollah, recently said that while it pains him to think of Israel ceding the Golan, “for real peace one must be willing to pay a real price”. He added that Israel could “manage” without keeping the territory.

Aside from wanting to achieve a peace deal with Syria, analysts said Israel also wants to sever Syrian ties with Iran and with Hizbollah as well as Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Still, many of the Golan’s Jewish residents warn that giving up the region would jeopardise Israel’s security.

“We won’t have any line of defence left,” said Naomi Altman, sounding angry as she leaned on the green-painted cashier counter at her family’s gardening nursery, her husband labelling plants nearby.

“Look what happened in Gush Katif!” She referred to what used to be the biggest Jewish settlement block in the Gaza Strip, from which Israel moved settlers and soldiers three years ago. Since then, many Israelis who had initially supported the withdrawal changed their minds amid constant rocket attacks by Gaza militants on Israel’s southern communities.

Mrs Altman, who immigrated to Israel from Argentina during her 20s and has lived in the Golan with her husband for 33 years, said she would leave the country in the case of a forced move. “It’s a big disappointment,” she said, referring to the new negotiations. “It’s stressful – you feel like the ground is shaking. People tell me not to worry, that it’s only talk.”

But not all the Golan inhabitants oppose an Israeli pull-out. About 20,000 Druze Muslims reside in four villages in the region’s north, most of them having rejected Israel’s offer of citizenship after the 1967 war and maintaining close family ties with relatives in Syria and Lebanon. While the Druze, who reside primarily in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, enjoy relative prosperity under Israeli rule, few said they would prefer Israel to keep control.

“This territory belongs to Syria, and she’ll get it back either in peace or in war,” said Nashaat Aborafa, an apple and cherry grower with large blue eyes and a thick, sun-bleached moustache from Buqata, a village of about 7,000 Druze located just kilometres away from the Israel-Syria border.

As his car bumped along the unpaved road running through his orchards, Mr Aborafa described how he often hears the mosque’s imam from the neighbouring village across the Syrian border leading prayers. At home, he follows Syrian television and radio programmes and even hangs a keychain with a photo of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president – “I like him very much,” he said of him – on his kitchen doorjamb.

But as he took cover from the sun under the shade of a tree and enjoyed a gentle wind during a cherry-picking stop, he wondered out loud about how his life would be under Syrian rule. “I live in freedom here, but I don’t know if I will have the same freedom there,” he said.

vbekker@thenational.ae