By Patrick Moser
GHAJAR, Jun 06, 2009 (AFP) - Mahmud Salman is Israeli, his father was Syrian and his village is mired in the muddle of Middle East politics on the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syria and Lebanon.
"I am Israeli, I speak Arabic, I believe in God," the 29-year-old says. Until Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, his father and the other villagers in Ghajar, were Syrians.
He hopes the village on the northwestern edge of the strategic plateau will remain indefinitely under Israeli control.
Ghajar's fate could be tied to Sunday's voting in Lebanon, where an alliance led by the staunchly anti-Israel Hezbollah is running a tight race against a US-backed coalition.
About half of Ghajar is in Lebanon and there has been talk of an Israeli withdrawal from that part of the village. Salman, who works as an electrician in a nearby Israeli kibbutz, staunchly opposes that.
"But I can only hope," he says with a shrug as a donkey ambles through an Israeli military checkpoint at the entrance of Ghajar.
While residents may travel freely to other parts of the occupied Golan Heights and to Israel proper, many say they feel trapped in a political quagmire.
They have no access to Syria or Lebanon just meters (yards) away from their homes, but are more bothered by the fact that no outsiders are allowed into the village, other than Israeli soldiers.
When there's a death, the body has to be taken out of the village where police and medical officials can sign the death certificate.
Or if a refrigerator repairman is called, he has to work on the appliance outside the checkpoint. "That means you need a really long power cord," says Najib Khatib the spokesman for the village of 2,300.
The village has the misfortune of finding itself on the frontlines of Israel's conflicts with neighbouring states and within shooting distance of what locals say are Heabollah positions.
Ghajar fell under Israeli control after the Jewish state seized the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Golan was annexed in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community,
Unlike the majority of 18,000 Druze in the Golan, residents of Ghajar, who are members of the Alawite Islamic minority, accepted Israeli nationality in 1981.
Over the years, the village expanded northwards. In 2000, when the United Nations demarcated the border, the northern half of the village came under Lebanese control and the other side remained held by Israel.
Israel retook the Lebanese part of Ghajar during its 2006 war on Hezbollah and has since built a security fence to prevent guerrillas from entering the enclave.
Israeli media said last month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to announce plans for a withdrawal from north Ghajar. A few days later, a UN envoy presented Israel with proposals for ensuring the security of the residents.
There has been no official word since, but reserve army Colonel Kobi Marom says any agreement would have to include guarantees Hezbollah fighters would stay out of the village.
Much will depend on the outcome of Sunday's election in Lebanon, he says.
"If Hezbollah wins, the chance that Israel will withdraw from the northern part of the village is minimal," says Marom, who fought in the 2006 Lebanon war and is one of the 20,000 Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights.
Removing Israeli troops from the Lebanese half of the village is a requirement of UN Security Council resolution 1701 which brought an end to the 2006 war in Lebanon.
But the resolution also calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah and Israel has claimed that a lack of progress in collecting weapons has made a withdrawal impossible.
At the checkpoint outside Ghajar, Khatib recalls the "tremendous" damage the village suffered during the 34-day war that killed at least 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
When Ghajar residents filed for compensation as did Israeli communities affected by the war, "the finance ministry rejected our claim, arguing that we are not on Israeli territory.".
Khatib insists he considers himself "a citizen of Israel and of the Golan," and says all Ghajar villagers feel the same.
He admits his village's woes are rooted in complex regional issues, but those, he says, are for others to resolve.
"We're simple people, not politicians. We just want to live and raise our children with dignity."
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Copyright AFP 2009.
