The Golan Heights, Israel
Posted By admin on May 27, 2015
The Golan Heights
Geologically, the Golan Heights are a plateau and part of a volcanic field that extends northeast almost to Damascus. The entire area is scattered with inactive volcanic cones. Mount Hermon is in the most northern point of Golan Heights but is geologically separate from the volcanic field.
History In biblical times, the Golan Heights was referred to as "Bashan;" the word "Golan" apparently derives from the biblical city of "Golan in Bashan" (Deuteronomy 4:43, Joshua 21:27). The area was assigned to the tribe of Manasheh, although the tribe of Dan is also associated with the Golan.
In the First Temple Period (953-586 BCE), the area was contested between the northern Jewish Kingdom of Israel and the Aramean Kingdom, based in Damascus. In the late 6th - 5th centuries BCE the region was settled by returning Jewish exiles from Babylonia.
The Golan Heights, along with the rest of the region, came under the control of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and his successors, the Greeks. In the mid 2nd century BCE, Judah Maccabee and his brothers came to the aid of the local Jewish communities when these areas came under attack by their non-Jewish neighbors. Judah's grandnephew, the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannai, later added the Heights to his kingdom. In those days, the Golans chief city was Gamla. The Jews of Gamla joined their brothers in the Great Revolt against Rome in the 1st century CE, but the revolt failed and the city fell into Roman hands in 67 CE.
The Jewish presence on the Golan Heights was renewed in 1886-1887, when Jews from Tzfat purchased lands in the Golan, and in 1891, when Baron Rothschild purchased approximately 18,000 acres of land there. New Jewish immigrants to Israel established five small communities on these lands, but in 1898 the Turks forced them to leave. Almost 50 years later, in 1947, the lands were seized by the Syrian army.
Although most of the Golan Heights were included within Mandatory Palestine when the Mandate was formally granted in 1922, Britain relinquished the area to France in the Franco-British Agreement in 1923. The Heights became part of Syria upon the termination of the French Mandate in 1944.
After the 1948-1949 War of Independence, the Syrians built extensive fortifications on the Heights, from where they shelled civilian targets in Israel and launched terrorist attacks. Over 140 Israelis were killed and many more were injured in these attacks between 1949 and 1967; heavy property damage was also inflicted.
During the 1967 Six Day War, in response to Syrian attacks, the IDF captured the Golan Heights in just over 24 hours of intense fighting. Nearly all of the Golan's Arab inhabitants fled as a result of the war; four Druze villages remain, three on the slopes of Mt. Hermon and one in the northern Golan.
Almost immediately after the war, Israel renewed the Jewish presence on the Golan. Kibbutz Merom Golan was founded in July 1967, at the initiative of kibbutzim in the nearby Upper Galilee and Hula Valley. By 1970, there were 12 Jewish communities on the Golan.
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The Golan Heights, Israel
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