Digging Up Disputes on the Golan

On both sides of the Syrian-Israeli border, archeologists agree that when politics mixes with science, knowledge loses out and history can be distorted.

But archeology is no exception in a region where politics permeates just about everything. And the Golan Heights’ archeological sites--whose history they reflect and what will happen to them--are especially touchy subjects at a time when Syria and Israel are trying to end 50 years of hostilities.

The Golan, seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed in 1981, is Syria’s asking price for a peace that would include diplomatic and trade relations, open borders and security agreements. During the past 33 years, several biblical and Talmudic sites have been excavated along with some prehistoric ones.

With any peace deal, Syria is expected to seek the return of all artifacts that have been removed, many of which are in Israeli museums. A piece of mosaic floor from Hamat Gader, a site dating to the 4th century, is displayed in the Jerusalem Supreme Court building.

The hot springs at Hamat Gader made it popular as long ago as the Roman era; today the springs still draw visitors and the ruins are an Israeli national parkland.

Israel is interested in ensuring that sites--including ruins of synagogues and a Jewish city conquered by the Romans in AD 67--are preserved.

There is a precedent for return

ing sites and artifacts: Israel’s 1979 peace with Egypt eventually returned all artifacts excavated during Israel’s 15-year occupation of the Sinai peninsula. But Golan sites carry more emotional meaning for Israelis than Sinai sites ever did.

“In Sinai, you don’t really have any villages you can say were Jewish,” said Harley Stark, a Jerusalem archeologist. In the Golan, he said, archeologists have identified specific villages cited in the Talmud and have found Jewish symbols carved in lintels.

Syrian officials acknowledge that little beyond archeological surveys had been done before Is rael seized the plateau in 1967. By then, the Golan already had been a military front line for two decades.

Today the glimpse of the past provided by Israeli and foreign teams tells more about Jewish and Christian traditions than about Arab and Islamic history. Opinions vary on whether that is a true reflection of what existed, an innocent exaggeration or a sinister attempt to alter history.

To Syria’s antiquities director, Sultan Muhesen, Israel has used archeology to exaggerate a Jewish presence and has neglected other layers of history, particularly Arab-Islamic, along the way.

“Their way of working in Golan was completely oriented toward religious and political aims,” Muhesen said. “They want to prove the Bible. They want to prove historical rights, as they say, to this land.”

There have been attempts in Israeli scholarly and popular research to lay a historical claim to the Golan. But, Muhesen said, the area is an integral part of Levantine, Syrian and Arab history stretching at least to the second millennium BC and was mentioned in cuneiform texts long before the Christian era.

“If there was some Jewish community, they should not exaggerate, making from whatever inscription a Jewish village,” he said. “We have the Jewish community in Damascus. Can we say then that Damascus is a Jewish city?”

Today only about 125 Jews remain in Syria, but Damascus and Jerusalem are just 140 miles apart, and there were centuries when Syria was home to a substantial Jewish population.

Syrian Jews trace their roots to the Prophet Elijah’s sojourn to Damascus 3,000 years ago. In 1099, when more than 50,000 Jews fled Christian armies that conquered Jerusalem in the First Crusade, the Jewish community began to flourish. A century ago, 100,000 Jews lived in Damascus.

Moshe Hartal, Golan district archeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority, said he has done some work relating to Arab-Islamic sites in the northern Golan but maintains that the nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouins left few traces.

Stark and a Syrian archeologist were equally adamant that politics should not affect scientific work--and that at times it does.

“Archeology is a form of nationalism,” Stark said, adding that archeologists also have their personal interests.

A Jewish archeologist may dig through Islamic or Christian layers to examine a synagogue beneath, he said, while a Muslim archeologist might focus on a mosque and not dig further to reveal a Christian or Jewish site.

Regardless of what is left exposed, Stark said a site still must be excavated scientifically, taking care that all aspects are thoroughly recorded to provide the most complete understanding of human influences on the landscape.

Amr al-Azm, an archeologist and lecturer at Damascus University, said he has no problem with the Israelis having carried out archeological work on the Golan or removing artifacts--the science requires that they be taken out, studied and stored or displayed somewhere.

“Good, scholarly work should transgress any political or racial or any other boundaries,” al-Azm said. “But when scholarly work gets perverted or subverted by political ideology, then it is a rotten egg wherever it is.”

Al-Azm is circumspect when asked whether that has happened on the Golan. There is evidence of a Jewish presence there, he says, but public relations comes into play when history is recorded hundreds of years later in a politically charged atmosphere.

When writing about what may have been a few peasants fighting over grazing land with sticks and stones, “you’re going to say armies marched and we ran around, deep wounds and walls collapsed. Everybody exaggerates.”

Injecting the peace process into such a debate only heightens the sensitivity. The return of sites in the heart of the Golan is virtually certain under any peace deal, including the 1st century Gamla battle site touted as a “Jewish city on the Golan.”

Who controls other significant sites will depend on where the final border lies.

Excavation work is in progress at Beth Saida, known as the birthplace of the apostles Peter, Andrew and Philip, along the Sea of Galilee. Less than 10 miles down the shore is Kursi, site of a 6th century Byzantine monastery said to commemorate a miracle in which Jesus healed two men possessed by demons.

Near the Jordanian border is Hamat Gader--el-Himma to Syrians--site of a Roman bath complex and synagogue.

Syria expects all of those towns and sites to be returned under its demand that borders be set where they stood on June 4, 1967.

Israel appears more interested in the 1923 British colonial border, which would push the line a few miles back from the lake shore and keep Hamat Gader in Israel. Such a settlement would keep all access to the Sea of Galilee, a valuable water source, within Israel.

Though recent efforts to reach a deal have appeared more promising than ever before, talks have been stalled since January, and the death of longtime Syrian President Hafez Assad on June 10 will probably delay any resumption.

Setting borders is the main issue to be resolved before addressing matters such as what to do with relics of the past. Both sides have indicated they expect the break to be temporary.

If a peace deal returns the Golan, the Syrian antiquities chief says Syrian archeologists will reevaluate excavated sites and investigate untouched ones.

Muhesen says that based on research elsewhere in Syria, their findings could provide a very different picture of the Golan’s past. “We know that this land, historically, culturally--since millennia--was occupied by our ancestors, and what we are finding proves that,” he said.

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Key Golan Sites

Some key historical sites in the Golan Heights:

Gamla:Ancient city where thousands of Jews reputedly were slaughtered or leaped to their deaths off a rocky ridge when the Romans conquered it in the 1st century.

Banias:Cult center first settled in the 3rd century BC and later the site of a pagan city identified in the New Testament as Caesarea Philippi. A Crusader fortress during the Christian era.

Hamat Gader:Hot springs made it site of baths dating to the 2nd century, though peak came in Roman times. Archeologists excavated what is believed to be a synagogue built between the 4th and 6th centuries.

Kursi:Church and monastery along the Sea of Galilee, probably 6th century. Complex thought to commemorate New Testament miracle where Jesus is said to have healed two men possessed by demons.

Beth Saida:Fishing village said to be site of several of Jesus’ miracles and birthplace of apostles Peter, Andrew and Philip. Site of 10-foot-high city gate, largest of biblical period excavated in Israel.

Nimrod:Crusader fortress in northern Golan. Changed hands many times; Arabic inscriptions indicate it was maintained primarily by Muslims. Fell into disuse at end of the 13th century, when Crusader rule ended in region.

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Source: Israel Information Center, Israeli Foreign Ministry.