Golan+Heights+and+Mt.+Bental

= Pre-Trip Research... Lior Barhai "cohesive" =

Location of your site:
Golan Heights is located in Syria but occupied by Israel. coordinates:
 * = __ [|32°58′54″N 35°44′58″E] __ ||

== Geographical Features (Include a Picture or Map): ==

The Golan Heights is an area measuring 1,175 square kilometres (454 sq mi) that borders Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. Golan Heights ranges in [|elevation] from 2,814 metres (9,232 ft) on [|Mount Hermon] in the north, to about 400 metres (1,300 ft) elevation along the [|Yarmuk River] in the south.

Th e Meaning of the Name of your Site:
19th century authors interpreted the word "Golan" as meaning "something surrounded, hence a district". The Greek name for the region is Gaulanitis. In the Mishan the name is Gablān similar to Aramaic language names for the region: Gawlāna, Guwlana and Gublānā. The name Golan Heights was not used before the 19th century. The UN refers to the region as The Occupied Syrian Golan.

Historical Background/Significance:
(a) Israeli presence in the Golan Heights provides a defensible border against invasion by land; (b) All of northern Israel is within range of direct artillery fire from the Golan Heights; (c) The Heights control the main water sources of the State of Israel. The Golan Heights have been under Israeli law, jurisdication, and administration since [|1981].

== Do other Cultures or Religions have connections to your site?: == No

Connect a Talmudic/Biblical saying to your site:
"Hear this word, you cows of Bashan;” Zechariah 11:2 - “Wail, oaks of Bashan; the dense forest has been cut down!” Psalm 133

== Share any Midrash, Fables, or other “stories” about the site: ==

In the Old Testament, the Golan Heights was referred to as "Bashan." The Bashan was promised to the Patriarch Abraham and the people of Israel in the "Brit Bein HaBetarim" (The Covenant of Abraham beteween the cattle prts) (Genesis 15). The word "Golan" derives from the biblical city of "Golan in Bashan," (Deuteronomy 4:43, Joshua 21:27). The area was assigned to the tribe of Menashe (Joshua 13:29-31). I IIn the first temple period (953-586 BCE), the area was contested between the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and the Aramean kingdom based inn Damascus. King Ahab of Israel (reigned c. 874-852 BCE) defeated Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near the site of Kibbutz Afik in the southern Golan (I Kings 20:26-30), and the prophet Elisha prophesied that King Jehoash of Israel (reigned c. 801-785 BCE) would defeat Ben-Hadad III of Damascus, also near Kibbutz Afik (11 Kings 13:17). In the Second Temple period, late 6th and 5th centuries BCE, the Golan heights area was settled by returning Jewish exiles from Babylonia. It is known that in the mid 2nd century BCE, Judah Maccabee and his brothers came to the support Jewish Golan towns when the latter came under attack from their non-Jewish neighbors (I Maccabees 5). The Hasmonean King Alexander Jannai (reigned 103-76 BCE) later added the Heights to his kingdom. Jewish settlement continued for at least 700 years after that.[|Josephus Flavius] (//Ant.// iv. 5. //3; Wars,// ii. 6.3) enumerates four provinces of Bashan,Gaulanitis, Trachonitis, Auranitis and Batanaea. Gaulanitis probably corredpponds to the modern Golan. The district capital was Gamla, which was the area's last Jewish stronghold to resist the Romans during the Great Revolt, falling in the year 67. Despite the failure of the revolt, Jewish communities on the Golan continued, and even flourished, during the Talmudic period. The remains of no less than 25 synagogues from the period between the revolt and the Islamic conquest in 636, when organized Jewish settlement on the Golan came to an end, have been excavated. A basalt lintel stone was found in the village of Dabura, north of Qazrin, with the engraved inscription, "This is the Beit Midrash (religious school) of Rabbi Eliezer Hakapar". This is the only archeological evidence for the existence of a "Beit Midrash" in Talmudic period. The Tosefta of "Braitat hatehumin" includes the Golan and Transjordan in the holy borders of the land. It obligates the Golan with the Mitzvot imposed on the land: Trumot, Ma'asrot and Shevi'it. The Jerusalem Talmud lists seven Jewish towns in the Suseita region, some of whose names have been preserved to this very day: Nob, Hissafiya and Kfar Harub, all in the Suseita region. Permanent settlements in the Golan disappeared with the Arab conquest, and it became a land of nomads and brigands. In the 19th century, the heads of the Zionist Movement and the people of the old cities of Safed and Tiberias viewed the Golan as part of the effort of resettling the land of Israel. The Jewish presence on the Golan was renewed in 1886, when the "Bnei Yehuda" society of Safed purchased a plot of land in Ramataniya village in central Golan, four kilometers north-west of the present day religious moshav of Keshet. They named their settlement "Golan BeBashan" and settled there for about a year. In 1887, they purchased lands between the modern day Bnei Yehuda and Kibbutz Ein Gev. This community survived until 1920, when two of its last members were murdered in the anti-Jewish riots which erupted in the spring of that year. In 1891, Baron Rothschild purchased approximately 18,000 acres of land about 15 km east of Ramat Hamagshimim, in what is now Syria. First Aliyah (1881-1903) immigrants established five small communities on this land, but were forced to leave by the Turks in 1898. The lands were farmed until 1947 by the Palestine Colonization Association and the Israel Colonization Association, when they were seized by the Syrian army. Most of the Golan Heights were included within Mandatory Palestine when the Mandate was formally granted in 1922, but Britain ceded the area to France in the Franco-British Agreement of 7 March 1923. The Golan Heights became part of Syria after the termination of the French mandate in 1944. During the 1948-49 [|War of Independence] the Syrians army attacked the adjacent Jewish areas and managed to advance along the border, beyond the international borderlines. After the war, the Syrians built extensive fortifications on the Heights, which were used for shelling of civilian targets in Israel. 140 Israelis were killed and many more were injured in these attacks between 1949 and 1967, ad particularly in the spring of 1957. Because of this pounding, the IDF conquered the Golan Heights during the [|Six day war]. By 1970, there were 12 Jewish communities on the Golan. The Golan heights were the focus of fierce fighting during the [|Yom Kippur War]. On 6 October 1973, Syrian forces attacked across the 1967 cease-fire line and made their greatest gains in the central Golan, almost reaching the escarpment, before being pushed back beyond the 1967 line by the main Israeli counter-attack, which began on the morning of 8 October. At present there are 33 communities on the Golan Heights, including the city of Qatzrin. Israel indicated its willingness to return the entire Golan to Syria up to the international border. But former Syrian President Hafez Assad insisted on Israeli cession of areas beyond the International border and insisted the that new border would give Syria a presence on the Sea of Galilee. Additional complications are introduced by the Lebanese claim that the Sheba farms, a tiny area in the Northwest Golan, belong to Syria. The Syrians do not officially recognize Lebanon as a separate country, bu rather, in some sense, designate Lebanon, like Palestine, a part of "[|greater Syria] ."

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