On March 21, when US President Donald Trump tweeted that he supports recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, tempers flared in Druze villages across the territory. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Majdal Shams, waving Syrian flags, carrying photographs of President Bashar al-Assad and shouting, “Golan – Syrian land forever.”
Israel has occupied 1,250 square kilometers of the Golan Heights for 52 years, ever since capturing it in 1967 from the Syrians, who used its strategic position to attack Israeli villages in the Galilee and Jordan Valley for nearly 20 years. Of the 128,000 Syrian citizens who once lived there, only 6,000, most of them Druze, decided to remain there. The rest abandoned their homes and fled to Syria.