Trump Heights:
At the end of a winding road on a dusty hillside in the Israeli-annexed Golan, the yellow gates of Trump Heights slowly open for cars, passing a golden-lettered sign honouring the US president-elect.
Emblazoned with Israeli and US flags, the settlement is an homage to Donald Trump who in 2019 recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the strategic plateau, making the United States the first, and so far only, country to do so.
Five years after its inauguration, the modest settlement is home to some 26 Jewish families living in a cluster of makeshift homes and caravans, though they have plans to substantially expand it.
Within the next year, Trump Heights will double its population, community leader Yarden Freimann told AFP on Tuesday, and in three years he expects 99 families to move into new homes on spacious plots with new infrastructure to match.
Freimann may soon have official support, with the Israeli government approving a plan on Sunday to spend 40 million shekels ($11 million) to double the Jewish population in the Golan.
The plan followed the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria last week, and a subsequent decision to move Israeli troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Syrian-held area of the Golan.
Israel has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets in what it says is a bid to prevent them falling into hostile hands, as it has repeatedly warned against the threat posed by the neighbouring country’s new Islamist rulers.
Israel conquered most of the Golan from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed the two-thirds it controls in 1981.
‘Strong civilian frontier’
In the area’s Jewish settlements, located in the annexed part of the Golan, the newly allocated budget was warmly welcomed, especially after more than a year of rocket fire and drone attacks by the Iran-backed operator group Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
“We’re very happy that the government understands the importance of the Golan and the need to invest, not just in security, but also in growing the community here,” said Yaakov Selavan, deputy head of the Golan Heights Regional Council.
“As Israel’s northeastern frontier, we are not just here because of the views,” he said, adding that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel had shown “the necessity of a strong civilian frontier”.
“After the worst tragedy in the history of the modern state of Israel, now we need to continue building and build back better,” Selavan, a resident of the nearby settlement of Yonatan, said.
He said that a strategic plan is already in motion to develop the area, whose Jewish population numbers around 30,000.
They live alongside some 23,000 Druze, whose presence predates the occupation and who largely remain loyal to Syria.
In addition to improving roads and other infrastructure and expanding existing settlements, the plan includes the creation of three new communities, one beside Trump Heights and another, potentially, on a controversial stretch of land disputed with Lebanon.
“We actually just got the papers from the Israel Land Authority,” Selavan said, pointing on a map to the area Israelis call Mount Dov and the Lebanese know as the Shebaa Farms.
He said a team was already preparing to explore the possibility of building there.
Contacted by AFP, the Land Authority did not provide an immediate response to Selavan’s claim.
‘This is our reality’
In Trump Heights, beyond the temporary structures, the earth has already been cleared to lay the foundations of around 50 new homes.
Freimann said that three years after the first family arrived in 2021, the community now has around 70 adults and more than 60 children under 13.
Freimann said all of the families stayed despite the war of the past year because of the “interpersonal connection” of the community, a mix of religious and secular Jews.
Population growth has nonetheless been slow, despite previous government attempts to encourage it.
Outside one of the small homes, Yedidya Ostroff, 31, cleared away fallen tree branches and leaves. He moved into Trump Heights with his wife on Tuesday.
“We came here, because the vision of this community, the people here, and their aspirations for the future was just right for us,” he said.
Asked if they had concerns about the volatile security situation, Ostroff said “I’m not worried… this is what we know, unfortunately. I hope it will stay calm, but this is our reality.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
