Today we traveled to Kidmat Zvi, a serene country village in the northern part of the Golan Heights, in the north east of Israel, a volcanic plateaux above Lake Kinneret, i.e. the Sea of Galilee, i.e. the place Jesus allegedly walked on. Just before that we stopped off at Mount Bental, an outlook point where you can see into the Golan, Syria and Lebanon.
On a clear day the view is breathtaking and, on the clearest of days, the first, tallest buildings on the outskirts of Damascus, some 25 KM away, can be seen. But, life is not always clear. Here, at a coffee shop called Coffee Annan, annan meaning clouds, we were given a briefing by an expert who until recently was an intelligence officer in the IDF Northern Command.
The weather was cold and misty and unfortunately we could not see how the three countries converge so closely on the Golan. But what was made very clear was how the realpolitik between the countries in the region are intertwined.
Syria wants peace with Israel as a strategic platform for greater access and acceptance by the West, especially America. This is crucial for Syria because its economy is stagnating and its only current ally is Iran. Syria desperately wants out of the ‘Axis of Evil’. Israel wants peace but will find it very hard to give up the Golan Heights, let alone giving it up first.
Hummus Tables of Damascus out of reach
Lebanon is embroiled in a power struggle between moderate Sunnis and Christians and the increasingly powerful Hizbullah. Chances for peace and stability are fleeting, and the whole story is very complicated. Still, some of the Israelis thought, wouldn’t it be great to just be able to hop over the border and eat some of the famous hummus in Damascus. Others, from the German delegation, mouthed objections about being hummussed out once and for all.
At Kidmat Zvi we met with three residents of this little community, who told us about their lives and how they came to live on the contested plateaux. The 20,000 or so people who live on the Golan exist under the constant shadow of eventual evacuation, as this piece of land is on the negotiating table between Israel and Syria. It is not easy to live constantly with this pressure, and the discussion was emotional.
Israel conquered the Golan in the 1967 Six Day War and most Israelis see it as a part of Israel, whereas the Syrians want all of the Golan back. The vast majority of the Stiftung group were of the opinion that eventually Israel would have to return the land to the Syrians for a peace deal. Does this mean we are all liberals?
The discussion that developed became one in which ‘the settlers’, as one of the Germans called them, defended their view that they should not be removed from the Golan, even if there was going to be peace between Israel and Syria. The meeting was a good window for the Germans into one of the most pressing issues in the current Israeli discourse.
The three residents we met defended their positions passionately, arguing that a peace agreement which destroys the Jewish presence on the Golan is not worth the effort, while many in our group argued otherwise. It is clear that the Israeli members of the Stiftung group are largely left and center-left politically, and it was instructive to hear the other side of the argument from the residents of Kidmat Zvi.
Someone noted that it was unfortunate that a meeting with Israeli settlers from settlements in the West Bank is not a part of this program, as the complex relationship of the settlers to the State of Israel is one of the central issues making up the Israeli story. Perhaps this meeting might still happen.
Amir & Christian
