Golan Heights
The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. It hosts vital water sources that feed the Hasbani River and the Jordan River. Two thirds of the area was depopulated and occupied by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed in 1981. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the United States became the first country to recognize Golan Heights as part of Israel. No other UN member state has formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the territory, and the international community largely considers it Israeli-occupied Syrian land. In late 2024, amid collapse of the Syrian government's control, Israel forces entered and took control of the United Nations‑monitored demilitarized buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Golan dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. It was home to the biblical Geshur, and was later incorporated into Aram-Damascus, before being ruled by several foreign and domestic powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Itureans, Hasmoneans, Romans, Ghassanids, several caliphates, and the Mamluk Sultanate. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century until its collapse, and subsequently became part of the French Mandate in Syria and the State of Damascus in 1923. When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic, spanning about.
After the Six-Day War of 1967, the Golan Heights was occupied and administered by Israel. Following the war, Syria dismissed any negotiations with Israel as part of the Khartoum Resolution at the 1967 Arab League summit. Civil administration of a third of the Golan heights, including the capital Quneitra, was restored to Syria in a disengagement agreement the year after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Construction of Israeli settlements began in the territory held by Israel, which was under a military administration until the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law in 1981, which applied Israeli law to the territory; this move has been described as an annexation and was condemned by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 497.
After the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, control of the Syrian-administered part of the Golan Heights was split between the state government and Syrian opposition forces, with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force maintaining a buffer zone in between to help implement the Israeli–Syrian ceasefire across the Purple Line. From 2012 to 2018, the eastern half of the Golan Heights became a scene of repeated battles between the Syrian Army, rebel factions of the Syrian opposition as well as various jihadist organizations such as al-Nusra Front and the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army. In July 2018, the Syrian government regained full control over the eastern Golan Heights. After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Israel occupied the demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights as a "temporary defensive position", followed by two additional Syrian villages, Jamlah and Maaraba.
Etymology
In the Bible, Golan is mentioned as a city of refuge located in Bashan: Deuteronomy 4:43, Joshua 20:8 and 1 Chronicles 6:71. Nineteenth-century authors interpreted the word Golan as meaning "something surrounded, hence a district". The shift in the meaning of Golan, from a town to a broader district or territory, is first attested by the Jewish historian Josephus. His account likely reflects Roman administrative changes implemented after the Great Jewish Revolt.The Greek name for the region is Gaulanîtis. In the Mishnah the name is Gablān similar to Aramaic language names for the region: Gawlāna, Guwlana and Gublānā.
The Arabic name is Jawlān, sometimes romanized as Djolan, which is an Arabized version of the Canaanite and Hebrew name. Arab geographers like Al-Muqaddasi referred to the Jawlan as one of the Jibāl al-Sharifa of the holy land, though the region is technically a plateau. It is not clear if this designation was inspired by the Greek honorific for Mount Athos. What is clear is that there were many holy sites in the Golan surrounding Mount Hermon connected to events involving Jesus and the Apostles that received increased attention following Christianity's adoption as the religion of the Empire. Dozens of churches and monastic retreats proliferated there, secured by the Arab Christian Ghassanid foederati, whose capital was at Jabiya. This Christian ascetic tradition continued and spread into Islam, as al-Muqaddasi notes meeting a community of forty of his coreligionists who wore robes of wool and subsisted on acorns, demonstrating its place as one of the "holy mountains" to followers of Islam and the Abrahamic tradition.
The name Golan Heights was not used in English before the 19th century.
History
Prehistory
The Venus of Berekhat Ram, a pebble from the Lower Paleolithic era found in the Golan Heights, may have been carved by Homo erectus between 700,000 and 230,000 BC.Bronze Age
The southern Golan saw a rise in settlements from the 2nd millennium BCE onwards. These were small settlements located on the slopes overlooking the Sea of Galilee or nearby gorges. They may correspond to the "cities of the Land of Garu'" mentioned in Amarna Letter #256.5, written by the prince of Pihilu. This suggests a different form of political organization compared to the prevalent city-states of the region, such as Hatzor to the west and Ashteroth to the east. The Golan had numerous settlements in the Middle Bronze Age until they were largely destroyed by Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III in the mid 2nd millennium BCE. Following this the level of habitation in the area decreased.Iron Age
Following the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Golan was home to the newly formed kingdom of Geshur, likely a continuation of the earlier "Land of Garu". The Hebrew Bible mentions it as a distinct entity during the reign of David. David's marriage to Maacha, daughter of King Talmai of Geshur, supports a dynastic alliance with Israel. However, by the mid-9th century BC, Aram-Damascus absorbed Geshur into its expanding territory. Aram-Damascus' rivalry with the Kingdom of Israel led to numerous military clashes in the Golan and Gilead regions throughout the 9th and 8th centuries BC. The Bible recounts two Israelite victories at Aphek, a location possibly corresponding to the modern-day Afik, near the Sea of Galilee.Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian periods
During the 8th century BC, the Assyrians conquered the region, incorporating it into the province of Qarnayim, likely including Damascus as well. This period was succeeded by the Babylonian and the Achaemenid Empire. In the 5th century BC, the Achaemenid Empire allowed the region to be resettled by returning Jewish exiles from the Babylonian Captivity, a fact that has been noted in the Mosaic of Rehob.After the Assyrian period, about four centuries provide limited archaeological finds in the Golan.
Hellenistic and early Roman periods
The Golan Heights, along with the rest of the region, came under the control of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, following the Battle of Issus. Following Alexander's death, the Golan came under the domination of the Macedonian general Seleucus and remained part of the Seleucid Empire for most of the next two centuries. In the middle of the 2nd century BC, Itureans moved into the Golan, occupying over one hundred locations in the region. Iturean stones and pottery have been found in the area. Itureans also built several temples, one of them in function up until the Islamic conquest.Around 83–81 BC, the Golan was captured by the Hasmonean king and high priest Alexander Jannaeus, annexing the area to the Hasmonean kingdom of Judaea. Following this conquest, the Hasmoneans encouraged Jewish migrants from Judea to settle in the Golan. Most scholars agree that this settlement began after the Hasmonean conquest, though it might have started earlier, probably in the mid-2nd century BC. Over the next century, Jewish settlement in the Golan and nearby regions became widespread, reaching north to Damascus and east to Naveh.
File:Golan_Heights_-_Gamla_view.jpg|thumb|Ruins of the ancient Jewish city of Gamla, home to one of the earliest known synagogues. The city was besieged destroyed by the Romans in 71 CE, during the First Jewish–Roman War.
When Herod the Great ascended to power in Judaea during the latter half of the first century BC, the region as far as Trachonitis, Batanea and Auranitis was put under his control by Augustus Caesar. Following the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, Augustus Caesar adjudicated that the Golan fell within the Tetrarchy of Herod's son, Herod Philip I. The capital of Jewish Galaunitis, Gamla, was a prominent city and major stronghold. It housed one of the earliest known synagogues, believed to have been constructed in the late 1st century BC, when the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing.
After Philip's death in 34 AD, the Romans absorbed the Golan into the province of Syria, but Caligula restored the territory to Herod's grandson Agrippa in 37. Following Agrippa's death in 44, the Romans again annexed the Golan to Syria, promptly to return it again when Claudius traded the Golan to Agrippa II, the son of Agrippa I, in 51 as part of a land swap.
By the time of the Great Jewish revolt, which began in 66 AD, part of the Golan Heights was predominantly inhabited by Jews. Josephus depicts the western and central Golan as densely populated with cities that emerged on fertile stony soil. Despite nominally being under Agrippa's control and situated outside the province of Judaea, the Jewish communities in the area participated in the revolt. Initially, Gamla was loyal to Rome, but later the town switched allegiance and even minted its own revolt coins. Josephus, who was appointed by the provisional government in Jerusalem as commander of Galilee, fortified the cities of Sogana, Seleucia, and Gamla in the Golan. The Roman military, under Vespasian's command, eventually ended the northern revolt in 67 AD by capturing Gamla after a siege. Josephus reports that the people of Gamla opted for mass suicide, throwing themselves into a ravine. Today, the visible breach in the wall near the synagogue, along with remnants such as fortress walls, tower ruins, armor fragments, various projectiles, and fire damage, testify to the siege's intensity.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, many Jews fled north to Galilee and the Golan, further increasing the Jewish population in the region. Another notable surge in Jewish migration to the Golan took place in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, c. 135 AD. During this time, Jews remained a minority of the population in the Golan.
From 93 AD, the Paneas region forming the north of the Golan belonged to the province of Phoenice. Based on Ptolemy's Geography, the western portions of the Golan, including the regions of Hippos and Gaulanitis, were part of Syria Palaestina, the new province which replaced Judaea after Bar Kokhba's revolt. The eastern parts belong to the province of Arabia Petraea, established in 106 AD.
By the close of the second century, Judah ha-Nasi was granted a lease for 2,000 units of land in the Golan. An excavation at Hippos discovered a Roman road that connected the Sea of Galilee with the city of Nawa in Syria.