G ola n R eport
suburbs of Damascus, and in other cities. The projects were originally tent camps until the Syrian government constructed single-family homes. Many were able to rent or buy homes and start businesses. Nearly 200,000 of the displaced and their children and grandchildren have found employment abroad, especially in the Gulf. Others continue to live in poverty with a serious problem of overcrowding. Syria still considers this a “temporary” arrangement, pending Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and the residents’ return. The government gave IDPs preferential status in regard to jobs in public works projects and in attending universities.103 The government also has a Bureau of Golan Affairs, a Popular Commission for the Liberation of the Golan, and sponsors a Golani newspaper. It welcomes Golanis whom Israel allows to cross the ceasefire line and encourages those under occupation to maintain their Syrian identity, assigning them Syrian national identity numbers. In 2001, it began paying salaries and benefits to Golani school and government employees removed by Israel early in the occupation. Syrian television has a bureau on the Golan and villagers watch Syrian TV programs. The ruins of Quneitra have been left “intact” as a memorial to the war and as an object lesson on Israeli violence for visitors, such as Pope John Paul II in 2001. Government plans to reconstruct the city and two destroyed villages have produced little since they were announced in 2004. Twelve new housing projects attracted few people back to an area with few jobs. The second generation that grew up in Damascus found places as “workers, office employees, artisans, or merchants.” The older generation still wants to go home.104 Since an entire population was displaced in a catastrophic event, government aid to the IDPs took the place of the support frequently supplied to ordinary migrants by support networks based on kinship, religion, or ethnicity, which were now overwhelmed. The people remain attached to their old villages, even though they were all physically destroyed by the Israelis in 1967 after the war. One housing project with 22,000 people is called Bteha, named after the residents’ village back on the Golan; its street names also
Humanitarian needs have not required the assistance of UN agencies, although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has assisted with facilitating “minimum contact” between separated Golani families since 1967. The ICRC has also assisted Golanis under occupation and in Syria, conveying birth, death, marriage, and power of attorney documents and enabling the settlement of issues regarding pensions, inheritance, and property rights. See: Helena Cobban, “Golan Days,” Part 5 and “Forty years on, people displaced from the Golan remain in waiting” (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2007); available at: http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/11354A1A3BE82407C1257385 0037B6C6/$file/Syria_IDPs_Overview_Oct07.pdf. See also: “Syrian Arab Republic: ICRC Annual Report 2009”; available at http://cicr.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/syria-icrc-annual-report-2009/$File/icrcannual-report-2009-syrian.pdf. 104 Julian Barnes-Dacey, “Yearning for the Golan Heights: why Syria wants it back,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28, 2009; available at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/0928/p06s05-wome.html. Barnes-Dacey, “Syria angles to reclaim Golan from Israel,” Chronicle Foreign Service, March 6, 2008; available at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jele2chkOiYJ:articles.sfgate.com/2008-03-06/ news/17168351_1_golan-border-israel-s-water-supply-golan-heights+%22methat+saleh%22+golan&cd=1& hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us. “Golan Heights teachers dismissed by Israeli to get Syrian salary,” Ha’aretz, August 28, 2001; available at http://www.haaretz.com/news/golan-heights-teachers-dismissed-by-israel-to-get-syriansalary-1.68245. 103
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