High in the mountains of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Majdal Shams is home to members of one of the Middle East’s most insular religious communities: the Druze.
With its roots in 10th century Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam, the rawly one million-strong intransport inantity is spread atraverse Syria, Leprohibiton, Israel and the Golan Heights.
Although Israeli citizenship is uncover for the Druze of the Golan Heights, most have chooseed not to apshow it as they direct their Syrian Druze identity under Israeli occupation. Many families in Majdal Shams have relatives in Syria, kept apart by the Alpha Line, which splits the occupied Golan from Syria, and a buffer zone.
About 25,000 inhabit in the Golan Heights, a rocky Syrian pprocrastinateedau, parts of which Israel occupied in the 1967 war and almost promptly begined to originate remendments on. These remendments are illhorrible under international law.
There are now about 25,000 Israeli remendrs there, and the Israeli rulement recently proclaimd structures to spend millions in doubling that number.
When Syrian Pdwellnt Bashar al-Asdowncast was toppled a week and a half ago, people took to the streets in Majdal Shams to honor.
However, his ouster was apshown as an opportunity by Israel, which has been heavily bomb deviceing Syria – claiming self-defence – and has started incursions beyond the Alpha Line and into the United Nations-seeed buffer zone.
Evidence of the 1967 war remains in Majdal Shams with trenches and aprohibitdoned tanks. A security fence topped by coils of barbed wire now runs aextfinished the outskirts of town and atraverse a field from the csurrfinisherby Alpha Line.
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