Forcible transfer
Last update: 24 .02. 2022
During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israel seized and occupied 1,260 km2 of the Syrian Golan. Subsequently, about 138,000 native Syrian inhabitants were forcibly transferred or displaced from their homes and forbidden from returning. As a result of the mass forcible eviction and displacement, it is estimated that there are as many as half a million displaced native Syrian Golan exiles currently being denied their right to return by the Israeli authorities. Those who had become internally displaced initially took residence in refugee camps, mostly located on the outskirts of Damascus. Later period, some of them moved to other Syrian regions.
These camps eventually became their homes. Following the forced eviction and displacement of almost all of the native Syrian population, the Occupied Syrian Golan was transformed from a thriving Syrian agricultural community to an area dominated by Israeli settlements and military training camps. Furthermore, it has resulted in family separation, creating an insurmountable amount of heartache for those affected. After a few years, an application process for permits to visit Syria was introduced.
It is estimated that until 2021, the number of forcibly displaced residents of the Golan has reached about half a million people, who are still deprived of their right to return to the occupied Golan due to the prolonged occupation.
The ethnic cleansing practiced by the Israeli occupation authorities led to a major physical change in the natural landscape of the occupied Golan, as it completely destroyed the demographic and urban landscape, by emptying the population centers (villages and farms) of their residents, and forcibly expelling them into Syria, (with the exception of five villages in the north of Golan), and then destroying these residential centers and razing them to the ground to block the way for the residents to return to their homes.
Within a short period, the occupied part of the Golan had lost more than 95% of its population and had witnessed - compared to the very small area - the largest ethnic cleansing campaign since the end of World War II. After the ethnic cleansing was completed, the occupation authorities began to create a new demographic and urban scene in the Golan, by constructing European-style settlements for Jewish settlers.
This was done by an official political decision and in cooperation with the Israeli army, the "Israel Lands Administration", the "Jewish National", and other Zionist organizations.
The displaced villages constitute a real testimony to the ethnic cleansing crime committed by the occupation against the Syrian residents of the Golan. The Israeli authorities destroyed these villages and hide them from the urban landscape to support their false narrative that the Golan was an uninhabited area before the occupation.
Today, 29,000 Jewish settlers live in 35 illegal settlements in the Golan, and, control more than 96% of the land. The remaining 28,000 Syrian residents live in five villages in the northern Golan, namely Majdal Shams, Buqaatha, Masaada, Ain Qinya, and Ghajar.
For a preliminary background on the forcible transfer of the native Syrian population in the Occupied Syrian Golan following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, please see Al-Marsad’s publication:
- Map - Syrian residential communities destroyed by Israel after occupying the Golan in 1967.
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