“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, it’s laughable,” Abu-Saleh said. Druze in the Golan “don’t serve in the IDF and so far are only receiving from the state. Although we weren’t included in some major cabinet decisions on budgets, when we build and make up plans we never felt discrimination. On the contrary, we always found an attentive ear.”
The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECSOC) last Monday passed a resolution condemning Israeli for the “economic and social repercussions of the occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan.”
Abu-Saleh wondered, “Why don’t they condemn the horrors in Syria, where dozens of children are killed daily? Golan residents have a good life.”
Although Druze community leaders have always insisted they were Syrian citizens seeking to return to Syria, the Syrian civil war has changed that, causing a sharp increase in the number of Golan Druze who applied for Israeli citizenship.
Karim Batkhish, a Druze resident of the town of Masaada, said “No one wants to see Syria here.”