The Anti-Assad Campaign in the Occupied Golan Heights, 2011-2012: Reimagining Syrian Nationalism in a Contested Borderland

Abstract

Since 1967, both Israel and Syria have laid claim to the Golan Heights, 1,250 square kilometers of territory that lies along the eastern edge of the internationally recognized border between the two countries. Over four decades, the Arab residents of this contested borderland have provided an unusual field for contestation between the two states. Both Israel and Syria, in collaboration with local allies, have enacted a series of programs designed to inculcate national consciousness within the population. This contestation has subsumed many aspects of daily life in the community, instrumentalizing a variety of practices and discourses to spread Israeli or Syrian nationalism. In 2011 and 2012, a small group of local activists organized a campaign to express opposition to the rule of Syrian President Bashār al-Assad. In addition to advertising an anti-regime agenda, this campaign constituted an unprecedented attempt to cultivate an alternative form of Syrian national consciousness in the Golan Heights, defined in opposition to the state-sponsored patriotism of both Israel and Syria.

Keywords

• borderland
• nationalism
• Israel
• Syria
• Golan Heights