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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Syrians living under Israeli
occupation resist civil service recruitment drive</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/patrick-o-strickland"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Patrick O. Strickland</a><br>
<b><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/syrians-living-under-israeli-occupation-resist-civil-service-recruitment-drive/13737">http://electronicintifada.net/content/syrians-living-under-israeli-occupation-resist-civil-service-recruitment-drive/13737</a></small></small></small></small></b><br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-08-11T21:02:00+00:00">11
August 2014</span> </div>
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media-element file-full" style="width:618px;">
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<p>Tamara Halabi has spent her whole life living under Israeli
rule in her hometown of Masade, one of the six Syrian villages
still standing in the occupied <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/golan-heights">Golan
Heights</a>.</p>
<p>Local residents’ historic refusal to accept Israeli citizenship
and normalize the Israeli occupation did not stop a Zionist
organization from attempting to get Halabi and others to
participate in civil service.</p>
<p>Civil service is a state-run volunteering program aimed at
individuals otherwise exempt from compulsory military service, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-discriminatory-civil-service-program-challenged/9226">participation
in which</a> conditions equal access to education and the job
market.</p>
<p>“We reject civil service because it is a way for Israel to
pressure us to give up our Syrian Arab identity and culture,”
Halabi, 19, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Israel has maintained its occupation of the Golan Heights after
capturing it in June 1967. The 130,000 people expelled by Israel
that year have now swelled to at least 433,000 displaced Golan
natives living elsewhere in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/syria">Syria</a>,
according to “<a
href="http://golan-marsad.org/wp-content/uploads/Family_Separation.pdf">Breaking
Down the Fence</a>,” a 2010 publication by Al-Marsad, a human
rights group that works in the Golan.</p>
<p>Today an estimated 23,000 Syrian Arabs — the majority of whom
are from the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/druze">Druze</a>
religious community — live under Israeli military occupation in
six villages across the Golan.</p>
<p>The indigenous Syrian residents of the Golan have historically
refrained from working in Israeli institutions. Yet according to
local activists, at least eleven Syrians in 2013 from the Golan
Heights were tricked into registering for civil service through
the auspices of Aminadav, a Zionist group that promotes civil
service among communities that do not serve in Israel’s
occupation army. They later dropped out of the program.</p>
<p>A <a
href="http://www.momken.org/Public/image/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AE%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%A9%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9%20%D9%81%D9%8A%20%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%A9%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A9.pdf">report</a>
published earlier this year by Baladna, a Haifa-based
Palestinian advocacy group, confirms that eleven Syrians
registered in 2013 for civic service.</p>
<p>As the Golan Heights grows increasingly divided over the
ongoing violence in Syria, local activists accuse Israel of
seizing the opportunity to strengthen its occupation while the
world’s attention is elsewhere.</p>
<p>During her final semester of her senior year in high school in
the spring of 2013, Tamara Halabi and her sister were approached
by Hajali as-Safadi and Aadna al-Wili, who concealed their
identities as Aminadav recruiters.</p>
<h2>“Too good to be true”</h2>
<p>In addition to her and her sister, Halabi says approximately
thirty other classmates were also targeted for recruitment.
As-Safadi told Halabi and others that a new program called
Helping the Hometown (Musaadet al-Balad in Arabic) included
recent graduates spending a year volunteering in schools,
hospitals and other places in exchange for university
scholarships and stipends for living costs.</p>
<p>Due to Israel’s restrictions and isolation of the occupied
Golan Heights, as well as its promotion of Jewish-only
settlements, indigenous residents suffer from a lack of economic
infrastructure and opportunities. For impoverished families, the
prospect of free education is appealing.</p>
<p>“I told her that I wanted to participate, but I wanted to
understand the benefit [for Aminadav],” Halabi recounted. “After
a while, my sister and I became suspicious because [the
recruiters] aren’t from our village — and it’s not logical that
it’s in their interest to help our hometown.”</p>
<p>“It sounded too good to be true,” she added.</p>
<p>After Halabi consulted relatives, she requested help from Aamer
Ibrahim, an activist based in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the
northern Golan Heights. Ibrahim campaigns against attempts by
Israel and its supporters to normalize the occupation by
promoting cooperation between Israeli Jews and Arabs without
addressing structural injustice.</p>
<h2>“Sell your morals”</h2>
<p>“Little by little we started to understand that it wasn’t
volunteering for the village or helping the village; it was
civil service … to give up your identity, to sell your ideals
and morals,” Halabi said.</p>
<p>After Ibrahim searched the name of the recruiter online in
Hebrew, he found that she works for Aminadav, whose website says
it was “founded in the spirit of religious <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionism">Zionism</a>.”</p>
<p>Aminadav’s “about us” page explains that the organization
recruits for civil service among orthodox religious Jewish and
Palestinian communities — both historically exempt from
compulsory military and civil service.</p>
<p>Ibrahim subsequently telephoned Aadna al-Wili, one of the
managers of the branch responsible for recruiting in the
northern region of present-day Israel and the occupied Golan.</p>
<p>Al-Wili grew suspicious of Ibrahim’s voice and said he sounded
too old to participate in the program. “She said it’s [for
people aged] between 17 and 21,” Ibrahim told The Electronic
Intifada. “So I told her I am asking on behalf of my little
brother. Then she began to describe the project and she didn’t
use the words ‘civil service.’”</p>
<p>When Ibrahim asked her directly if the project involved civil
service, she denied that it did. “It was clear that she was
lying at this point,” Ibrahim recalled.</p>
<p>Speaking to The Electronic Intifada by telephone, al-Wili
confirmed a civic service program in Aminadav working in many
Palestinian communities in present-day Israel. When asked about
their work in the occupied Golan Heights, however, she replied:
“I am not required to answer that question and I refuse to
answer.”</p>
<h2>Tax exemptions</h2>
<p>Ibrahim’s suspicions were vindicated by Sahar Vardi of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/new-profile">New
Profile</a>, a group that monitors the militarization of
Israeli society and supports <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/conscientious-objection">conscientious
objectors</a>. She explained that organizations like Aminadav
work under the auspices of “the national civil service
secretary” and “are registered as nonprofits and receive tax
exemptions.”</p>
<p>“These NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] are in a way
implementing the agency of national service,” Vardi told The
Electronic Intifada by email. “They are responsible for finding
volunteers and matching them with volunteer opportunities, as
well as training and preparing these volunteers.”</p>
<p>Organizations that promote civil service “get a budget from the
[science and technology] ministry to pay volunteers and provide
them with housing,” Vardi said.</p>
<p>Local residents say they reject cooperation with Israeli
governmental institutions.</p>
<p>After the news spread that the program was part of an Israeli
plan to recruit Syrians into civil service, the Aminadav
recruiters canceled a meeting that had been scheduled for
participants and their parents.</p>
<p>All of the estimated thirty people dropped out when they
learned that it was a civil service recruitment attempt.</p>
<p>Ibrahim explains that the plan “is a step towards eventually
promoting service” in the Israeli military, which for decades
has occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese lands in violation
of international law.</p>
<p>Ibrahim believes that Israel wants to “tokenize” Syrians from
the occupied Golan Heights as it has done with Druze
Palestinians and some Palestinian <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bedouins">Bedouins</a>
who serve in the military.</p>
<h2>“Exploiting suffering”</h2>
<p>“In my opinion, there is a direct link” between what is
happening in Syria today and the timing of this program, added
Ibrahim. “The [Israeli authorities] wanted to do such a project
before but the circumstances didn’t allow it.”</p>
<p>As natives of the Golan Heights grew more divided over whether
or not they should support <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bashar-al-assad">Bashar
al-Assad’s</a> regime in Damascus, Israel increased its
efforts to strengthen the institutions of occupation in the
Golan.</p>
<p>As of July 2013 – the last time the United Nations updated its
death toll in Syria – more than 100,000 people were <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/7/un-abandons-deathcountinsyria.html">estimated
to have been killed</a> since the uprising against Assad broke
out in March 2011.</p>
<p>Ibrahim accused Israel of “exploiting Syrian suffering” by
attempting to install a civil service program, further expanding
its Jewish-only settlements and simultaneously increasing its
exploitation of natural resources in the occupied territory.</p>
<p>In February 2013, Israel <a
href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Cheney-Linked-Company-to-Drill-in-Occupied-Golan-Heights.html">awarded
a contract</a> to a subsidiary of former US Vice President
Dick Cheney’s Genie Energy company, permitting the group to
explore for oil and natural gas in a 150-square-mile area of the
Golan Heights. Cheney, one of the chief architects of the
disastrous 2003 American war on Iraq, will serve as an adviser
for the exploration of the occupied territory.</p>
<p>According to the <em>Al-Monitor</em> website, some 4,000
Israelis <a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2012/10/the-plot-of-land-is-for-free-tho.html#">moved</a>
into Jewish-only settlements in the Golan Heights over the
course of the five years prior to October 2012. Settlements and
Israeli industrial zones were both expanded during that period.</p>
<p>Locals say those numbers have continued to increase since the
violence in Syria worsened.</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/taiseer-maray">Taiseer
Maray</a>, a doctor from Majdal Shams, began an organization
to raise awareness about Israel’s recent attempts to further the
colonization of the Golan Heights. Israel “had been waiting for
an opportunity” to strengthen its occupation, such as when the
world is focused on bloodshed in Syria and other places in the
region, he told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>“It is a colonial state,” he said. “This is expected.”</p>
<p><em>Aamer Ibrahim, Sawsan Khalife’ and Irene Nasser contributed
translation and research in Hebrew. </em></p>
<p><em>Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist and
regular contributor to Al Jazeera English, <em>AlterNet</em>
and The Electronic Intifada. His website is <a
href="http://postrickland.com/">www.postrickland.com</a>.
Follow him on Twitter <a
href="https://twitter.com/P_Strickland_">@P_Strickland_</a></em></p>
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