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The Golan Heights revisited
By Santwana Bhattacharya
DAMASCUS - At a time when television news channels in the Middle East are
spilling over with heart-wrenching stories of frightened children undergoing
psychological counseling in their freshly bombed-out schools in Gaza, a reprise
on the Golan Heights - the Syrian-Israeli conflict zone - may seem a little out
of place, if not a downright invented crisis. This calendar-perfect rolling
country, snuggled somewhere near the heart of parched holy lands, is the
relatively quieter dispute in these parts.
The picture of pretty, unforced repose provided by weekend picnickers who dot
the wild-flowered green meadows a few kilometers from the winding roads of
Quneitra, which is under Syria's control, underscores the calm. Here the breeze is cool, the fruits sold
by the village vendors fresh and juicy, and the children playing handball look
the way they should: free of cares. Nearby, parents busy themselves with
nothing more pressing than a relaxed game of backgammon.
One look at this Enid Blytonish idyll and it could be legitimately asked: why
open old wounds? After all, the bullet marks on the destroyed hospital in
Quneitra are 34 years old, more historical memento than live and active omen.
Syria and Israel have off and on been in dialogue, through mediation. They were
close to a settlement even in April 2008, and are not averse to talking again.
Guns are not blazing.
But, as the canny old saying goes, looks can be deceptive. A chance meeting
with Hazira Mohammad, and another reality comes creeping in. The elderly Druze
woman dressed in her traditional attire - black, flowing overall with light
silver embroidery - had strayed from the rest of her crowd, three of her
grandchildren in tow. Standing at a crossroad near a half-rubbled church, she
indicates a spot where she used to sell her berries in the village across the
barbed wire (which you otherwise missed) nearly half a century ago.
"There ... that is the road that goes to my village, Jubhil Maizi. You walk
down four kilometers, take a left turn and walk for another half kilometer ...
take another left. Can you see it? Can't you see it? It's there ... on the
other side ... I do not know if I can go there again," she says, haltingly.
Well, I could not see. As the road wound down and wound up, there were
scattered settlements visible on the far side. But I could see no village that
the old Druze woman saw so clearly.
It is to remind her sons, daughters-in-law and her grandchildren of their
village that she comes to Golan every summer. At least three times. Lest they
forget who they are and where they come from - in a small corner of the Earth,
in terms of civilization the center of the Earth for long, a sacred geography
scarred by competing visions, the Druze from Golan too are a tiny flock of mohajir
(emigrants) estranged from their homeland.
Hazira has been living in a tiny flat in Damascus with her family of 10 members
ever since the Six-Day War in 1967. Picnics are just a pretext to draw the
younger generation close to the roots, to keep them anchored. You slowly
realize that behind the jollity of every bouncing ball, and every food hamper
spread around the shady trees, there is a history of loss. That these are no
ordinary weekend revelers, but strange pilgrims.
With a new audience before her, Hazira launches into her story - probably
recounted every year to the family. She points to each and every pile of rubble
lying amid the greens to resurrect a village market. "This was the biggest souk
[market], our souk, in the entire Golan. It used to be very busy, full
of people, music, tea-stalls ... I feel sad." Her impatient family members try
to drag her away from the story-telling session. But she refuses to budge, "How
can I forget? How can I live anywhere else? That was my village, they have to
remember ... This is where ribbons where sold, the silversmith who made my
first earring."
You can't quite blame the younger lot. It is really hard to imagine this place
was a bustling market. As her voice trails off, the quiet of the place almost
gets at you. Suddenly, the stillness of the surroundings - Hazira's marketplace
of memories - engulfs everyone. For a second, you are almost tempted to mistake
it for another one of those archaeological sites that abound Syria. Opulent,
but dead.
The screeching sound of car tires wakes everyone from the reverie of the lost
world. A family packed into an old convertible is rushing somewhere. The man
behind the wheel reveals he has no time for a chat, he has to reach back before
it's too late. "Apples" was one of the words we caught. He had come to deliver
apples. Israel, I learnt later, has been allowing limited sale of apples, grown
by the Syrians in the Occupied Territories, to mainland Syria.
These are a few concessions - granted perhaps more on occasional whim than as
part of a coherent system of peace-making - that have been extracted by Syrians
in the Occupied Territories. Apart from the free university tuition that Syrian
students from the villages across the concertina are allowed to access in
Damascus and elsewhere.
We say "Syrian" with deliberation: the original inhabitants of occupied Golan
have steadfastly refused to surrender Syrian citizenship in favor of an Israeli
identity. And the authorities on the Syrian side say even the little movements
that are allowed them are fraught with short-term and long-term consequences
for the people.
Mohammad Ali, a senior official in the Syria-run Quneitra Governorate, claims
the years of resistance put up by the Syrians in the Occupied Territories have
only earned them a tough and unstable life. That they are denied electricity
and water by Israel - "we are supplying them from this side".
It seems too much prosperity in the apple trade is also not taken kindly. "They
often go back to see their entire orchards have been uprooted on some pretext
or the other," he adds. Just as the students who choose to study in the Syrian
universities have "to go back to plough their fields ... they get no jobs".
There is an alternative view emanating from the pro-Israeli lobby in the West,
ascribing the reluctance of the Golan Syrians to come under the Israeli
umbrella only to a fear of retribution in the future event of the lands
reverting to Syria. From this side of the concertina, one can only fall back on
general truths: a certain "stateless" modern youth have indeed come into being
in our times everywhere who seek a better, stable life.
They are alive to their history and culture, but not radicalized, and would
prefer to mediate their life experiences through modern, secular means. This is
a category quite visible among the other refugees who have washed up in Syria
in huge numbers recently, the Iraqis. But to deduce from this that the scales
may be tipping towards Israel among the Golan Syrians would fall short of
journalistic fairness.
What we can do is trace them as communities, through the broken-up numbers.
While some 20,000 Syrians live in the Occupied Territories, 76,000 live in the
part of Golan (roughly 600 square kilometers) that was restored to Syria after
the Yom Kippur War of 1973. According to the report of a conference held in
London in June 2007, there are also currently 346,000 displaced persons, like
Hazira's family, living scattered across Damascus and other Syrian cities.
As was widely reported in the international media, before making the 1974
withdrawal, Israel left a trail of destruction in which schools, hospitals,
villages and towns were razed. While the United Nations (UN) condemned the
action and still does not recognize the Israeli occupation of Golan, the Syrian
government continues to preserve Quneitra in its bombed-out state as a reminder
of the Israeli action.
Says Ali, "Our president has made it clear, we will not rebuild Quneitra [which
was the capital of Golan] till we get back our land." The rationale goes a bit
beyond those war-era skeleton buildings preserved, for instance, in Berlin:
this is not architecture as moral fable, but as evidence in court.
At the "Shouting Valley" in Majdal Shams, a small town right at the edge of the
UN-monitored border, our cellphones received text messages that said "Welcome
to Israel". It is here that Syrians gather to peer at the Occupied Territories
through binoculars. Sometimes they contact their relatives on the other side
through loudhailers.
Sixteen-year-old Jahina Safi Ali, who's come to Golan for the first time to
"see it with her own eyes", says "the experience" is much beyond what she "ever
thought it would be". However, the teenager adds quietly that though young
people like her want their occupied land back, "I don't want people to be
killed, rather we should talk. And try very hard [to break the deadlock]."
The settlements on the Israel-held side look quite prosperous. Big houses, none
less than three storeys, big cars, air-conditioners, pretty garden patches. And
there's heavy-duty construction work going on, as the half-finished new houses
and rumbling sounds from the beyond tell us. While the 19,300-old Druze and
2,100 Alawites living in the Occupied Territories mostly grow apples, the
Jewish settlers in Golan mostly prosper through wine-growing.
That fact says something. The dispute over Golan is, finally, not just for
military, strategic reasons, but also because of the ecosystem of the Golan
plateau, which is rich in water sources. The scenic beauty is just a plus. It
continues to provide Israel 15% of its total water supply.
Meanwhile, on no-man's land between the two Golans, UNDOF (the UN Disengagement
Observation Force) peacekeepers man towers to ensure the ceasefire is not
broken. And so that there's no fresh encroachment. They mostly have the view of
the snow-clad Mount Hermon for company.
The Croatian men who wave to us from their watchtowers have not gone back home
in many months. They too have been forced to leave their homeland, their
stories of strife and belonging, to guard over another's in the quest of
earning an honest living.
Santwana Bhattacharya is a New Delhi-based journalist who writes on
politics, parliament and elections. She is currently working on a book on
electoral reforms and the emergence of regional parties in India.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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