Israel Integrating Druze Areas

By SIDNEY E. ELSNER / Associate Editor

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MAJDEL CHAMS, Israeli-Occupied Syria — This is a Druze village high on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, bordering Lebanon. What goes on here shows how Israel is integrating the Golan Heights into Israel's economy, so that the people left in this area — perhaps 6,000 of the original 90,000 before the June war—never will want to break away from Israel.

No Druze left although all were Syrian citizens. The Golan Heights occupied area is about 17 miles deep by 55 miles wide, sitting atop the escarpment and mountains from the Sea of Galiliee northward. It is critically important because from here Israel can dominate Damascus — and with it all Syria —as Syria used to sit atop the Israeli villages and look down their throats.

All occupied areas — Golan, West Bank (the Judea-Samaria areas of former Palestine) and the Gaza Strip are under the direction of one man — Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. He is the military government. Under him are seven military governors in regional towns ranging from Jericho and Nablus in occupied Jordan to Kuneitra in occupied Syria.

Thus it is a deliberate policy and no accident of a different administrator when the contrasts are noted in handling the people of Golan and the people of the West Bank (600,000 Arabs there, perhaps 6,000 Druze and a few hundred Moslem Arabs in the Golan area). The Jordan occupation is strict segragation.

The Palestine Arabs are left to run their own affairs, provided they obey the ground rules: Don't propagandize against Israel, don't support the El Fatah sabotage units, continue daily life normally. The Golan-Druze area occupation is strict integration.

Every move Israel makes with the civilian population is intended to build up bonds that, in effect, will demand that Israel keep control and the area never be returned to Syria. The best way to show the contrasts is to list the differing ways Israel treats the same problems in the two areas.

What comes through is that while in both cases this is a military occupation, Israel is far from an arrogant conqueror. Our group of 10 editors and reporters from America, on a fact-finding mission sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal, found the following: THE MILITARY HAND West Bank—The army is as invisible as possible, except at road blocks.

The gun emplacements are well hidden, camouflaged. Golan Heights—The army is as visible and tough-appearing as possible. Personnel carriers are lined up, ready to move toward Syria. [...] Golan-Druze area—There are no restrictions on Druze movement in or out of Israel.

The Druze, an 850-year-old sect, are fanatical Arab - haters, one reason they get along so well with the Israelis. Now the Syrian area Druze are visiting relatives in Israel and are stunned by the living standards they find.

But I was in the home of Sheik Saliman, the mukhtar (leader) of Majdal Chams, and it was more lavishly furnished, in its own heavy style, than many a home in Cleveland Heights would be.

EDUCATION West Bank — Teachers and parents began a school strike last September over "interference" by Israel in local autonomy — the order to eliminate from Arab textbooks anti-Jewish passages, such as: "If you kill two Jews and three Jews, how many Jews have you killed?

This was solved by Defense Minister Dayan's astuteness in letting the Arabs fight a pillow which would not punch back. He let them alone, saying that if they wanted illiterate children, that was their business and the schools would stay closed. Eventually the parents sent their children back.

How this transcription was made

Published at reduced precision. The slide label gave 1969-06-05; the page does not support a day, so the record carries only what can be shown. Adjudicated against the printed page: Running head across the top right of the page: 'THE PLAIN DEALER, TH' — the line is cut off at the right edge of the scan, so the weekday and date are lost, but the paper name is clear at 12x. Corroborated on the same page by the reporter's comparison of a Dru Paper corrected with confidence. DATE NOT RESOLVED: the running head's date portion is cut off at the scan edge and nothing else on the page carries one. The swapped label would give 1968-05-02, and the surviving 'TH' is consistent with Thursday — but both candidate dates (2 May 1968 and 5 June 1969) fell on a Thursday Filed under the archive’s spelling; the page prints “Omaha World Herald”.

Context added by this archive

THE SOURCING ADMISSION IS THE FINDING, and the reporter prints it himself: 'Our group of 10 editors and reporters from America, on a fact-finding mission sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal, found the following:' Everything that follows — the whole comparative list, the access to Sheik Saliman, the roadblock photograph — comes from an organised trip paid for by an advocacy organisation, and the paper discloses it in one clause and then presents the results as findings.

It sits in the same paragraph as 'while in both cases this is a military occupation, Israel is far from an arrogant conqueror', which is the conclusion the trip was built to produce. SCHOOLBOOKS THREAD — this clipping is the thread's epilogue, written from the other end. Who is censoring: Israel, by 'the order to eliminate from Arab textbooks anti-Jewish passages'.

Note the phrase: 'anti-Jewish passages', flat, in the paper's own voice, where the 1967 AP copy said 'anti-Zionist material' and attributed it.

What happened: 'Teachers and parents began a school strike last September over "interference" by Israel in local autonomy' — and 'interference' is the one word the paper puts in scare quotes, so the Palestinian characterisation is marked as a claim while the Israeli one is not.

How it ended, in the paper's own voice: 'This was solved by Defense Minister Dayan's astuteness in letting the Arabs fight a pillow which would not punch back. He let them alone, saying that if they wanted illiterate children, that was their business and the schools would stay closed.

Eventually the parents sent their children back.' Dayan is 'astute'; the Palestinian parents are punching a pillow and are offered their children's illiteracy as the alternative. Is any Palestinian quoted: no. The strike is six months of Palestinian collective action rendered as a tactical problem Dayan solved by waiting.

SHARPEST LANGUAGE: 'The Druze, an 850-year-old sect, are fanatical Arab - haters, one reason they get along so well with the Israelis.' That is a staff Associate Editor, in his own voice, in a major metropolitan daily, explaining a political alignment by ascribing racial hatred to a whole sect as a compliment.

VOCABULARY, which is unusually candid for the batch and worth quoting against the rest: the dateline is 'MAJDEL CHAMS, Israeli-Occupied Syria'; the body has 'All occupied areas', 'occupied Jordan', 'occupied Syria', 'The Golan Heights occupied area', 'this is a military occupation', 'The Jordan occupation', 'The Golan-Druze area occupation'.

It also calls the West Bank 'the Judea-Samaria areas of former Palestine' — the only use of the Israeli settler-movement toponyms anywhere in this batch, and it sits in the same sentence as 'former Palestine'. And 'The Palestine Arabs are left to run their own affairs, provided they obey the ground rules'.

Cite this clipping

"Israel Integrating Druze Areas," The Plain Dealer, 1969. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-038. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-038