Golan Heights Part II

It is really interesting walking around Majdal Shams because everything is in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, and the people can speak and write all 3 languages. Going into a grocery store you see Jewish men buying products from Arab men, laughing together and admiring each other’s children. This scene is interrupted as soon as you go a few feet down the road, and there are “DANGER: MINES” signs everywhere, and at the top of the mountain an Israeli watchtower is home to a soldier with a gun that is almost as tall as he is. Most of the Arabs that live there are Druze, which is a sect of Islam that is not as religiously observant as most Muslims. For example, they don’t pray five times a day, they don’t fast for Ramadan, and the young women wear pretty much whatever they want. The older people in the town wear more traditional clothing.

A Druze man at a gas station:


On Wednesday night we met Dr. Taisseer at a ski lodge-themed restaurant called “Undefined”. The Golan Heights get a considerable amount of snow for the area and it is a popular ski resort, especially for the Israelis. Outside of the restaurant is a huge advertisement for North Face and a fake ski lift. The doctor told us some stories about living under occupation; the story that stuck out most to me was of the most recent clash between the Arabs and the Israelis only a couple weeks ago. There is a young student who is wanted by the Israelis because he is studying in Syria and they have accused him of collaborating with Hezbollah. When he flew home from school to visit his family, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) arrested him at the airport. The Israeli police then raided his parent’s house in Majdal Shams looking for incriminating evidence. His mother started screaming when she saw the police ransacking the house, mixing everything up. The noise attracted the neighbors, and lots of people started coming over to see what was happening and they became upset once they found out. The police ordered them to leave but they did not. The more people showed up, the more reinforcements the police called in, but soon they were overwhelmed by the townspeople who cornered them angrily. The police went into the house to hide, and they stayed there until Dr. Tassieer and some of the village elders came and finally calmed down the crowd so the Israeli police could come out. Dr. Taisseer told us they have had various other conflicts with the Israelis. Mostly it has to do with water issues, but there are other problems as well. Right now his organization is coming up with agricultural cooperatives for farmers but they are facing opposition from the Israelis who are not allowing them to carry out most of their projects.



The ambulance GfD just bought:


Golan for Development currently has a summer camp in session with about 300 kids attending and staying overnight in tents. We visited the camp site after dinner around 10:30 to check out what they were doing. Half of the kids were sitting on a stage playing a game facilitated by the camp counselors and the other half were somewhere else watching a film. It looked like they were having a lot of fun, and the doctor said it is a great opportunity for kids to do something enjoyable during the summer. He told us that last year the camp directors were tipped off a couple hours in advance that the Israeli military was coming to close down the camp, and they made a bunch of phone calls and within the hour 4,000 people from the town had gathered at the camp to protest. By the time the Israeli police got there, there was nothing they could do because they were so outnumbered.



The Syrian flag on the camp’s banner:


These two stories show the incredible sense of community in Majdal Shams; the people are united against the occupation that restricts so many parts of their lives and has stripped them of their national identity. Speaking of national identity, when we were hanging out in Dr. Tassieers office talking about the Tree of Life Conference in November (he is applying for a visa to travel to the US) he showed us his “travel documents”. The Arab people of the Golan Heights were offered citizenship by Israel when the area was annexed, but they refused because they would not, and have not, give up the hope of one day being reuniting with their homeland. Subsequently, they do not have real passports, but instead travel documents which permit them very limited mobility. On his travel document, Dr. Taisseer’s nationality is written as “UNDEFINED” and his birthday is 00/00/1959. I asked him why it says his birthday is 00/00 and he told me that in 1967 when Israel invaded the Golan they took everyone’s identification and then reissued new ones with only their year of their birth and a number for each person. Their new ID numbers were also distributed in order, so Dr. Taisseer said everyone in his family has the same number except for the last digit.


After chatting with him for a while in his office, Dr. Taisseer took me and Jiries for a tour around the town. Our first stop was a place we went to on the Tree of Life trip, which is a small road near the “cease-fire” line between Israel and Syria. We walked across the foundation of a house that is in the middle of construction and observed the border area. Doctor Tassieer told us that before 1974 the only thing demarcating the border was a small dirt road, but Syrians were regularly crossing back and forth across the border so in ’74 Israel put up a fence. Despite this, people still gathered at the fence to visit and talk to their friends and loved ones. One day Israel imprisoned a Syrian man who had jumped the fence, and as a result of the ensuing conflict Israel planted an entire field of mines on the Syrian side of the road so no one else could come into the annexed land, and no one could leave.

In the following pictures you can see the house under construction that we walked on right near the border; the flags flying from the construction material is a sign of good luck, kind of like the evil eye people have hanging up everywhere here. In the other pictures the small dirt road- for military use only- surrounded by an electric fence that defines the border. Right on the other side where you see the fields of grass there are around 2 MILLION landmines. Dr. Tassieer pointed out the areas on the mine field that look like they have been burned and explained that whenever too much shrubbery grows the Israeli soldiers in the watchtower shoot at the land until a mine blows up and starts a fire, this way no one can sneak in around the plants. Even though there over 2 million mines, people still try to escape or break in (after all, for many of them their friends, families, and land are on the opposite side). He told us just recently 3 people tried to escape; sadly one person was killed by a landmine and the other two were shot dead by the Israeli soldier. The doctor told us that Israel has the technological capacity to remove every single landmine in the area within one day, but it refuses to.



Israeli watchtower:

How would you like to be living in one of the two houses on either side of this sign?