Responding to Syrian Turmoil, Israel Resolves to Build Up the Golan

Meet the new proactive, take-no-chances Israel.

Settle the Golan Heights. (The Miryam Institute)

On Sunday the Israeli cabinet unanimously approved a plan by Prime Minister Netanyahu to invest tens of millions of shekels in doubling the Israeli population on the Golan Heights. The Prime Minister’s Office says the funds will go toward “education, renewable energy, the establishment of a student village and a plan for absorbing new residents.”

The Golan has been in Israel’s hands since it conquered it in the Six-Day War of 1967. Before that, Syrian forces on the Heights relentlessly shelled Israeli communities down below in the Galilee. The war put a permanent end to that problem.

The Golan forms a natural shield to Israel’s northeast, affording a commanding view of southern Syria and a very short plane ride—if needed—to Damascus. It’s a beautiful and fertile expanse, now dotted with Israeli towns and farms. Israel formally annexed it in 1981—a move that went unrecognized by the international community, which, in Israel’s case alone, upholds the notion that a country that conquers land from which it was attacked by an aggressor must politely hand that land back to the aggressor.

In 2019, however, the United States under President Trump broke with that aberrant consensus and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan. Today—still sparsely populated with wide open spaces—the Heights are home to about 50,000 people, about half of them Israeli Jews and about half belonging to a Druze community that increasingly identifies with Israel.

So why, after fifty-seven years of rather slow, small-scale settlement, has Israel now decided to develop the Golan much more ambitiously?

Part of the answer is encapsulated in the nom de guerre of an individual—Ahmad al-Shara, who is also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani. In Arabic, al-Julani means “from the Golan”—referring to the place where al-Shara was born.

Ahmad al-Shara is, of course, the leader of Hayat al-Tahrir Sham—the group of Sunni fighters that led the recent overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria.

Al-Shara, since those dramatic events, has been trying to project a moderate image. As noted by Yehuda Balanga of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University:

He calls for tolerance toward minorities in Syria, advocates utilizing the administrative infrastructure of the old regime to quickly restore normalcy, and gives interviews to both Syrian and international media to present himself and his organization, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, in a positive light.

...Without a doubt, to an external observer, the terrorist who once belonged to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, who was involved in horrifying acts of violence, and who has a $10 million US bounty on his head, seems to have shed his violent persona, laid down his weapons, and become a man of peace.

Part of the problem, though, is that al-Shara’s group’s name, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, means “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”—a geographic designation that includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. As Balanga asserts:

We must not be misled. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham's name reflects its goal. Its mission extends beyond liberating Syria—it seeks to establish "Greater Syria," which includes Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. Even now, numerous videos of rebel groups are circulating, declaring that their next stop is Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. Al-Shara's choice of the alias “Al-Julani” (from the Golan) was not coincidental.

Israel’s actions since the ousting of Assad and the rebels’ seizure of power in Damascus reflect the fact that the Israeli political and defense elites concur with that assessment of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and al-Shara/al-Julani—or, at the very least, are not going to take any chances.

Those actions include Israel’s military takeover of what was supposed to be a UN-monitored buffer zone—now abandoned by UN troops—between Israel and Syria; and Israel’s massive bombing campaign against the ground, aerial, naval, and mass-destruction assets of Assad’s erstwhile military—“aimed,” as the Washington Post put it, “at eliminating future threats from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.”

And, now, the decision to start building up the Golan—and to give al-Shara/al-Julani the message that it is not up for grabs, and by the time he gets around to making claims on it, it will be evident to all how serious Israel is about keeping it.

Like clockwork, notwithstanding the US recognition, the condemnations are rolling in, with Germany “urging Israel to abandon its plans to double the population living in the Golan Heights,” saying “It is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”

The answer to Germany is that Israel and the Jewish people have learned some very harsh lessons about not taking threats seriously enough, and Israel is done with passive wait-and-see games.