Golan Heights, Israel, Syria and the US

Byzantine era stone carvings – estimated to date somewhere from the 4th to the 7th centuries – are on display for visitors to the Golan Heights Winery. They picture twisting vines and bunches of grapes. These pieces of natural history are meant to demonstrate that the Jewish Israeli settlers who established this winery in the early 1980s were far from the first to do so. People have been growing grapes and making wine in the hills of the Golan for a long, long time.

Our tour guide at the Golan Heights Winery informed us that his employer is the largest wine exporter in Israel. Some twenty percent of the 6 million bottles a year the winery produces is sold outside of Israel. Most of that product goes to the United State. But it’s also sold in the wine-loving nations of Italy, France and Germany, according to one of the winery’s marketing people. The Golan Heights Winery does a wide range of wines, from syrah to viognier to desert wines. And there’s evidence that it’s doing something right: one of its cabernets made it to Wine Spectator’s 2008 list of top 100 wines of the world.

“We make wine, not politics,” Dudi Reuveni told me when I asked him what might happen to the winery if Israel gives the Golan back to Syria. Reuveni runs the visitors center at the winery and said he gets the question all the time, especially from Israeli tourists. Of course he said he worries about the possibility of losing his livelihood and his home (he’s lived in the Golan since the 1970s).

“But we don’t know,” Reuveni said. “What will be, will be. That’s the real answer, I think.”

I put the same question to the winery’s CEO, Anat Levy. “We keep on doing what we always do,” she said. “The best wine in Israel.”

“We don’t make future plans, I know it sounds weird, but this is true,” she said.

Levy said the only future plans she worries about are planting more vines, making new varieties of wine and finding new markets.

But not if Salman Fakheraldeen has anything to say about it. He’s an activist with an organization that’s trying to organize an international boycott of goods produced by Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights. I spoke with Fakheraldeen at his home in Majdel Shams, the largest of the Druse villages in the Golan. It’s right on the border with Syria.

Fakheraldeen said, no less than the Palestinians of the West Bank, the Druse Arabs who stayed in the Golan after the 1967 war are living under Israeli occupation; and that the region should rightfully be returned to Syrian control.

“Because the Israelis are enjoying the growth of the wine business in the Golan,” Fakheraldeen said. “Thousands of Syrians [that were] forced to leave the Golan are still refugees in Syria.”

There are strong feelings on both sides. Supporters of Israel say it was Syrian military aggression in the first place that helped push the Israelis into a war in 1967 that ended with Syrian forces ousted from the Golan. And in any case, the truth is that the Heights has earned the reputation of being the most peaceful place under Israeli control. That still doesn’t mean it would be easy for Israel and Syria to reach a final peace agreement.

The latest episode of the American Influence podcast is about the Golan Heights, the politics surrounding the territory, and what’s at stake for some of the people who live there. Middle East expert and former State Department advisor, Aaron David Miller explains the political dynamics of Israeli-Syrian-US relations. Then, hear from a Jewish Israeli bee keeper and a Syrian nationalist who  both call the Golan their home.