Druze residents of the Golan Heights protested on Sunday to mark the 39th anniversary of the first protest against the Israeli decision to annex the Golan Heights in 1982, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.
Israel gained control of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and the Knesset voted to annex the Golan Heights in 1981. Druze citizens of the Golan Heights largely refrained from accepting Israeli citizenship and even sanctioned those who chose to accept Israeli citizenship. In response to the annexation decision, the Druze in the area went on strike for weeks until the government promised not to force identity cards on the Druze.
Since then, more Druze residents have accepted Israeli citizenship, although much of the community chooses to avoid picking sides in the conflict over the area between Israel and Syria.
Dozens of Druze residents of the city of Majdal Shams near the Israeli-Syrian border carried Syrian flags and pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday. They made remarks affirming their identity as Syrian Arabs and protesting Israeli rule over the Golan Heights, according to SANA.
Simultaneous protests took place on the Syrian side of the border in Quneitra.
Such protests have occurred multiple times near the Syrian-Israeli border in the past few decades, usually involving a few dozen protesters. About 23,000 Druze live in the Israeli Golan Heights.
The protests come less than a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that the Golan Heights would always remain part of Israel, in response to remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken walking back the Trump administration’s recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel.
“The Golan was and will remain part of Israel,” Netanyahu said while visiting a health clinic in Zarzir, near Nazareth, on Tuesday. “With an agreement, without an agreement, we are not coming down from the Golan. It will remain a sovereign part of the State of Israel.”
Blinken said in an interview on CNN on Monday night: “As a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security.”
“Legal questions are something else, and over time if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we look at, but we are nowhere near that,” he stated.
Former US president Donald Trump officially granted US recognition of the Golan as Israeli territory in 2019, a dramatic shift from decades of US policy.
Lahav Harkov and Reuters contributed to this report.