Buqata, Israel - As rumors swirl concerning the possibility of resumed talks between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights, local Druse struggle to avoid being dragged into the fray.
As we enter the falafel restaurant in the Druse village of Buqata on a freezing Golan late afternoon, a Lebanese music station is playing on the television in the corner. A friend of the owner sits reading the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahranoth, ignoring a decor encompassing Druse symbols, questionable artistic reproductions and a team photo of the Kiryat Shmona football team.
A flock of sheep is driven past along the main road as we wait for our pitas, stopping the few cars heading north to the Mt Hebron ski-field on Sunday, the first day of the working week for Israelis. Just yesterday the ski trails were closed, not by order of Israel's elite mountain-warfare unit which patrols the ceasefire line above the piste, but because the runs were full to capacity with Israeli day-trippers and weekend travelers.
While seemingly innocuous at first glance, the open identification of the restaurant owner with the Kiryat Shmona football team is a potent system of the partial integration of Golan Druse into Israeli society. Kiryat Shmona, the northernmost team in the Israeli first division, represents a nearby Jewish city - with a predominantly right wing electorate - hit hard by Syrian-allied Hizbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War.
The Golan Heights has been peaceful since the 1981 disturbances in Druse communities when Israeli efforts to force residents to accept Israeli identity cards following the unilateral annexation of the Heights precipitated a five-month general strike and violent demonstrations, provoking a harsh Israeli crackdown.
According to an AP report, older Druse residents are deeply critical of Syria's failure to press Israel for the release of 15 Golan Druse held for prolonged periods over their role in the disturbances, including two who are entering their twenty-third year of incarceration for blowing up an Israeli military base.
Integration
Thousands of Israelis flock to Mt Hermon each weekend during the ski season, looking to escape the crowded, cold cities of central Israel for the freezing cheek-by-jowl madcap mayhem of the Golan piste.
Knowing that few will venture voluntarily into the backstreets and main shopping centers of Druse villages, Buqata, Majd el-Shams and M'sada entrepreneurs have established eateries and stalls along the main road north, whose Hebrew signs announce they are catering to the Israeli love of shawarma, chips and falafel.
Druse lands on the Golan have diminished significantly since the first Israeli conquest in 1967 through a mixture of minefields, military confiscations and the expansion of Jewish settlements and Israeli parks.
The villagers find themselves caught between two worlds, needing Hebrew for socio-economic improvement, while keen to evade the wrath of the Syrian government through often unavoidable associations with the Israeli state. These associations are widespread and include both economic ties and municipal-ministry contacts. The Israeli-Arab curriculum, including Hebrew instruction, is taught in plateau schools.
The economic position of Golan Druse is far better than that of their coreligionists and relations in neighboring Syrian-controlled villages. Druse horticulturalists have been permitted to export 11,000 tons of apples to Syria per annum since 2005 - the only existing economic relationship between the two countries.
Nonetheless, the integration of local Druse communities into the wider Israeli economy is now a fait accompli, and any handover of the Golan to Syria will have an immediate deleterious impact on plateau residents.
Identity issues
Annual parades in Golan villages on Syrian independence reflect a genuine sense of national belonging, but very little is known of the attitudes of the some 20,000 Golan Druse concerning the return of the Golan Heights to Syria under any future peace deal.
In recent years, Druse sought to counter enculturation through such measures as the Syrian nationalist "Withdrawal" summer camp, established in Majd al-Shams in the late1990s by leaders of the 1980s nationalist struggle in a bid to promote identification with Syria and Syrian aspirations for the return of the Golan.
While bartering for the return of the Golan in return for peace, Syria appears unwilling to countenance more than the cold peace Israeli enjoys with Egypt, given the threat of open relations to Allawite Baathist political predominance.
Syria is keen to promote the identification of Golan Druse with both their Syrian families and the state itself, announcing a scheme earlier this year to issue Golan Druse with identification cards. This move is likely to garner a significant response given Druse concerns regarding their potential transfer to Syria.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak likely added to these concerns through his recent message to Syria that Israel does not oppose the identity card scheme. Barak is at odds with rival Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and much of his own Labor party so his acquiescence may not reflect official government policy.
The card issue has more than symbolic significance given that one of the manifestations of the Golan Druse revolt of 1981 was the burning of Israeli identity cards. Reportedly, less than 10 percent of Golan Druse currently hold Israeli citizenship.
Israel allows several hundred Druse students to cross the border to attend Damascus University every year - where they receive free tuition - with 400 reportedly registered as Syrian citizens via the identity card scheme so far this year.
Since 1988, Israel has also permitted Druse clerics to attend the 400,000-strong sect's religious rites in Syria each year - although there was a significant controversy last September when 330 Druse clerics visited Syria without official approval; a move roundly castigated by Zionist Druse leaders in Israel proper.
Minority
Much of the ongoing reportage on the future of the Golan Heights ignores ongoing Israeli efforts to "strengthen" Jewish settlements on the strategically important plateau.
Most Israeli communities are situated in the south of the conquered area, in a seeming attempt to create territorial contiguity in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee. Access to the waters of the sea were reportedly a key sticking point in the 2000 Sheperdstown talks and may be again should the al-Assad government demand access in future talks.
Residents of these Israeli communities now reportedly outnumber Druse on the Golan. These settlements do not engender the same domestic controversy as their West bank equivalents even amongst center-left Israeli voters. Many Israelis see the establishment of Jewish communities on the Golan as a fitting response to the pre-1967 Syrian shelling of Israeli communities around the Sea of Galilee.
With public opinion shifting to the right following the 2006 Lebanon War, government moves to hand over the Golan will provoke even more opposition than in 2000, when the pro-Golan campaign and the failure of Sheperstown presaged and significantly influenced the subsequent collapse of talks with the Palestinians.
Rhetorical tool
There is a growing sense that Olmert is dangling the prospect of resumed talks with Syria, not just as a carrot to the al-Assad administration, but as a means to build pressure on Palestinian negotiation teams in the current peace talks - which most leaks and last week's US intervention indicate are going nowhere fast.
Syria has responded to the Israeli carrot-and-stick approach - which has included threatened retaliation against Syria for Hizbollah strikes - through reportedly expressing its interest in talks on three conditions.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reports that these conditions are that the talks not take place under fire (interpreted as Israeli raids on Palestinian militants); that Lebanese and Palestinian peace talks take place at the same time; and that they be public and accompanied by Israeli goodwill measures signaling a willingness to withdraw from all "occupied Arab territories."
Recent Bush administration measures, building pressure on Syria over Lebanon and Iraq, indicate that nascent efforts to rebuild fractured US-Syrian relations have now been abandoned. The US State Department is now openly supporting the calls of some anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians for a boycott of the Arab League meeting in Damascus in a few days time.
The assassination of Hizbollah commander Imad Mughniyah, which was deeply embarrassing to Syrian intelligence, and September Israeli air strike in northern Syria indicate that talks are not in the offing despite the gradual easing of complimentary military build-ups along the Golan ceasefire line, which peaked in mid-2007.
In light of these developments, a return to full negotiations between Syria and Israel - there are rumors that talks are ongoing behind the scenes - appears unlikely if not out of the question before the next US presidential administration.
Laying low
Golan Druse have largely kept their heads down since the early 1980s, avoiding direct association with the Palestinian struggle and Hizbollah, while expressing muted support for Syrian government positions.
With a rift reportedly developing between a younger generation heavily influenced by Israeli culture and their more pro-Syrian elders, Golan Druse communities are both in a transitional phase and in the grip of a profound identity crisis.
A Druse student interviewed by the AP last year said that friends who had studied in Syria had returned with frightening stories. "Here, there's TV, the Internet, democracy and freedom of thought. Those things aren't available in Syria," he said.
Caught between Israel and Syria and in danger of association through affiliation with the anti-Syrian Druse leadership in Lebanon and Zionist Druse of Israel, the fate of the Golan community remains in the hands of others.