Destructive Interventions

Mapping Militarization in Occupied Jawlan

A woman prays in the ruins of the mosque she grew up attending before the Israeli military occupation.

Overview

This project documents on-site counter-narratives in the Occupied Syrian Jawlan, or Golan between northern Israel and western Syria. The Jawlan, once home to hundreds of Syrian villages and farms, has seen repeated and continued periods of IDF military intervention, causing the expulsion of over 95% of the Syrian population. The research uses a framework of investigation across three consecutive scales of order: the Field or Ground, the Building or Space, and the Body or Self.

Within this framework, the research critically explores the nature and consequences of three distinct types of military intervention at three sites: Excavation at Ya’ar Odem, Ruination in Ein Fit, and Appropriation in Za’ura.

Topography and Scale

The occupation, through militaristic and infrastructural intervention, has dramatically reshaped physical and perceptual realities in the region. Beginning in 1967, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Syrian Jawlan and executed a tactical invasion, leading to the displacement of nearly 150,000 Syrian citizens. Of the approximately 139 villages and 61 designated farms, only five villages now remain, with strictly limited access to farmland.

The project began with an investigation into the topographic and geologic conditions of the site and its surrounding area. This work showcases rain patterns and reveals limited access to reliable groundwater across the complex terrain of the region. Ultimately, this research project moved away from the study of natural resources, but early drawings like these helped to focus the project, and topographic studies would later become relevant to the analysis of Za’ura and its strategic hillside position.

Off-Site Research and Site Selection

Before traveling to the Jawlan to visit the site in-person, research and documentation focused on available online imagery and data. Of particular interest was the discovery of a number of popular ‘visited’ sites and their spatial relationship to various images that have been artificially blurred. This blurring effect, along with interviews with Syrian locals, led to the identification of a number of key sites of interest to investigate further.

Ultimately, three sites were chosen for this research. They provide a striking set of overlapping narratives, reinforced or contradicted through imagery and investigation across differing scales and vectors. In Ya’ar Odem, the destruction of buildings as well as selective deforestation have left profoundly visible patterns in the landscape, hiding neither what was present before the 1967 occupation, nor the military presence since. In Ein Fit, the violent destruction of the village of nearly 2,000 people has left dozens of buildings in a state of ruination, yet has also provided a space for returning Syrians to produce images of counter-occupation and moments of domesticity amongst the ruins. Za’ura, once a town of 1,500, is now a semi-active IDF military training ground, where homes have been replaced with internationally-standardized and bullet-riddled concrete bunkers, a constantly provocative display of power and control.

Ya’ar Odem

Ein Fit

Za’ura

Ya’ar Odem

Before 1967, Odem was the site of two Syrian farms, A’rab El Hesh and Al Sahtiyah. It had some permanent structures, but many were built with stone rather than concrete, so the ruins are often less visible than at other locations in the Jawlan - though some remain. Today, Ya’ar Odem is a large nature preserve under Israeli jurisdiction. The designation by the Israeli government of former occupied towns and farmlands as “nature reserves” undermines the process for occupied people to legally reclaim their homes and lands. At the northeastern corner of the site is a settlement with a population of roughly 130 Israelis, founded originally in 1975, with major re-investment occurring in 1981. Odem is also home to the widely popular Odem Mountain Winery, operating since 2003. Despite its international illegality, the winery has enjoyed major success in Israel and abroad. In its full breadth, revealed through satellite imagery, the plan of Odem Nature Reserve appears almost as if is in not natural at all. There is an uncanny artificiality about the forest’ organizational parti. Rather than a reserve, Ya’ar Odem, when viewed from above, appears rather more like a city of trees. Compared to the nearby village of Buq’ata at the same scale, lines of trees like roads surround plots of land that seem as if they once were blocks. Initially, this suggested that perhaps selective planting was done during the Israeli occupation to conceal roads and ruins below.

In fact, the planting in Odem is far from naturally occurring. This network of trees instead reveals two important layers of human activity at the site. Firstly, the borders of Syrian homesteads within the farms existing before 1967 were often lined with trees as a way to demarcate territory. What appeared to be planned, in fact, was, by Syrian farmers. The construction of tree lines to define property edges was not unique to these particular farmsteads, though it was more common due to the pre-existence of the trees in the surrounding area. After the Israeli military occupation, however, a new type of intervention took place on this site, one that reinforced the artificiality of the foliage, and reinforced Israel’s authority over the terrain.

Israeli Defense Forces carried out the selective, strategic, and intentional excavation of trees, alongside the destruction of Syrian homes and structures, to produce fields for military encampment and training. The Isreali intervention of excavation produces an occupation through upheaval, rather than concealment. The deconstruction of Syrian farmsteads, and the re-construction of a place both ‘natural’ and militarized is visible through maps as well as inhabitation of the site at the individual scale. The project of ownership through the intervention of excavation is clear in Odem, and the ongoing efforts of the military provide ample evidence of the critical role that the IDF plays in the continued construction of the occupation narrative.

Scenes from Ya’ar Odem depicting the excavation and abandonment of former farmsteads.

Ein Fit

Ein Fit was a northern Jawlani hillside village of roughly 2,000 people before the 1967 Israeli invasion. Ein Fit, meaning “Beautiful Spring’ in Arabic, once thrived in the region. Historical images, preserved and shared through online archives, paint a rich picture of tight-knit family and community structures.

Today it exists in a state of ruination. However, unlike many other areas that were completely flattened, Ein Fit’s destruction by Israeli military forces left it in a half-ruined state, where crumbling structures remain, as if a monument to the destructive capabilities of the occupying force.

The destruction at Ein Fit was overwhelming, despite the semi-ruination that now exists. Of all the remaining structures visible, a partial set of the villages original development, all are destroyed or semi-destroyed. The state of ruination is nothing short of catastrophic, leaving an almost cinematic level of violence. As one enters the edge of the former town, they are greeted by the crumbling walls of the primary school, riddled with bullet holes.

This is, of course, partly a display of showmanship on the part of the Israelis. The ‘spectacle’ of ruination, left explicitly by the Israeli military forces, is an effort to erase the present-ness of Syrians in the Jawlan, or to make historical their relation to the landscape. The continued fetishizing of ruination and war has been an instrumental strategy in Israel’s expansion and development in the Jawlan.

However, it also produced an interesting, and unintentional opportunity for Syrians to return, and to re-occupy the very homes they were once forced to flee. Signs of return are ever-present, through graffiti and other signage, as well as through stories of Syrians gathering here for picnics, social gatherings, and other communal activities. Syrian artists such as Randa Maddah have produced artworks and performed in the ruins.

Words such as “We will return” and “hope” are written on the walls of a semi-destroyed structure. Moments of domesticity remain as well, visible through architecture and objects. Pieces of broken plates and pottery are scattered amongst the ruins. This type of re-use of occupied space by Syrians seems special in Ein Fit, though it may not last, as military signs proclaiming this space an active military zone were installed sometime between 2017 and 2018.

Za’ura

Ein Fit and Za’ura were neighboring villages. Za’ura, just up the hillside from Ein Fit, had a pre-1967 population of roughly 1,500. Unlike Ein Fit, the remains of Za’ura’s structures are difficult to pin-point, as they have been mostly reduced to rubble. Za’ura has taken on a special, and strategic role for the Israeli interventionists, who converted the former village site into an active IDF combat training site. The area is completely rebuilt as a ‘village’ of concrete bunkers and Syrian style structures, replete with munitions and the scars of war. Considering the immensely steep terrain of the Jawlan, the steepness of the slope provided Za’ura with a tactical advantage to the Israelis when they seized the land. It therefore became the ideal place for a military training facility for ground troops.

While available online imagery often blurs or distorts the construction at Za’ura, being on-site reveals the true extent of the intervention. The IDF’s complete appropriation of the village and the village topology for militaristic purposes has produced a seemingly self-contradictory condition, neither fully militarized nor still civilian. This combination of vernacular and international military training infrastructure produces a space wherein civilian identity has been erased and replaced with a military one, yet lingers in the spatial arrangement of the newer structures in the landscape.

The appropriation of a villages footprint and relation to the landscape to produce a military training facility is perhaps the most egregious intervention tactic, one that produces the image of the village itself as a target for military action. Devastation and erasure are at the core of every move one makes through Za’ura. It operates as a site of concentrated military ‘spectacle’, wherein colonial and military infrastructures and activities bolster, highlight, and potentially celebrate the very destruction they create.

Each of these types of interventions serve the overall project of occupation in the Jawlan, and of the normalization of that occupation through continued presence, but more importantly, through continued intervention. The physical (re)construction of the glorified war effort, alongside continuous utilization of the military presence throughout the region has been in service of the production of a particular narrative, one wherein Israel’s presence in, and control of the Jawlan is perceived not only as necessary, but also as justified. Despite the overwhelming force in the Jawlan, still the counter-narratives of expelled Syrians persist.

Destructive Interventions