Majdal Shams, homeland of the Druze, stands restlessly on the brink of war | News about the occupied Golan Heights
High in the mountains of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Majdal Shams is home to members of one of the most isolated religious communities in the Middle East: the Druze.
With roots in 10th-century Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam, the minority of about one million is spread across Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Golan Heights.
Although Israeli citizenship is available to the Druze of the Golan Heights, most have chosen not to accept it while coming to terms with their Syrian Druze identity under Israeli occupation. Many families in Majdal Shams have relatives in Syria, kept separated by the Alpha Line that separates the occupied Golan from Syria and a buffer zone.
About 25,000 people live in the Golan Heights, a rocky Syrian plateau that Israel partially occupied in the 1967 war and began building settlements almost immediately. These settlements are illegal under international law.
There are now about 25,000 Israeli settlers there, and the Israeli government recently announced plans to invest millions to double that number.
When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown a week and a half ago, people in Majdal Shams took to the streets to celebrate.
However, his fall was used by Israel as an opportunity to massively bomb Syria – claiming self-defense – and to launch incursions beyond the Alpha Line and into the buffer zone monitored by the United Nations.
In Majdal Shams, trenches and abandoned tanks still bear witness to the 1967 war. A security fence with rolls of barbed wire now runs on the edge of the city and across a field on the nearby Alpha Line.
