Was the Golan Heights in Biblical Israel? ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Was the Golan Heights in Biblical Israel?

L'Orient Today interviews Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. He says:

Israel’s messianic claims to the Golan Heights are a very recent historical invention. During the 1967 war, the Golan Heights were regarded by key Israeli politicians and the Zionist right as outside the boundaries of the “Greater Land of Israel” — a point acknowledged by Yigal Kipnis, one of Israel’s leading historians on the Golan region.

After 1967, significant efforts were made to establish archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence in the area during antiquity. Much of this ‘evidence’ was later dismissed by Israeli archaeologists, including Zvi Ma’oz (who wrote Jews and Christians in the Golan Heights).

It was only from the mid-1970s onward that the Orthodox Jewish settlement movement, followed by far-right politicians, began claiming the Golan as part of ‘Greater Israel.’

Is this true?

Well, yes and no.

Most maps of the Twelve Tribes during the Biblical period do not include the Golan, even though it was meant to be part of the Promised Land in Deuteronomy - for most of the Biblical period it was not conquered.

However, the Golan Heights came under Jewish rule in the first century BCE.

Claudine Dauphin wrote in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1982:

The name 'Golan' is first mentioned in Deuteronomy 4.43 as a settlement in the region of the Bashan, that fell in the territory allocated to the tribe of Manasseh. It is referred to as a free city in Joshua 20. 8, and appears again as a Levitical city in IChronicles 6.7 I. The settlement in question is thought to be Sahem ed-Qjolan, beyond the eastern border formed by the river Rukkad. The name of the entire area is believed to be derived from this, according to FlaviusJosephus (Ant. IV, 5, 3: VIII, 2, 3; XIII, 15,4; BJ, 11,20,6; III, 3, 1-5; III, 10, 10; IV, I, I). His works allow one to retrace in detail the history of the province of Gaulanitis from Hellenistic times. The Golan fortresses of Gamala, Seleucia and Hippos, held by the Hellenistic Empires, were captured by Alexander J anneus in 83-8I B.C.E. and the area was annexed to the Hasmonean Kingdom (Ant. XIII, 15,3). This opened the way for increased Jewish settlement of the hitherto predominantly pagan area. It then seems to have become the scene of disturbances and violence, created by bands of robbers and political rebels who sought refuge on the wild rocky terrain of the Golan Heights (Ant. XVI, 9, 2). The Roman Emperor Augustus sought to contain this source of unrest by annexing the neighbouring districts of Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis. These he placed under Herod's administration in 23 B.C.E., and in 20 B.C.E. he added the area of Gaulanitis itself, the city of Pane as and the Ulatha Valley, all of which had until then been ruled by the kingdom of Iturea. To implement this new rule and maintain the peace, Herod initiated an extensive programme of paramilitary settlement. He transferred 3,000 Idumeans to the area of Trachonitis and 500 families of Jewish soldiers to Batanea, rewarding them by exemption from taxation (Ant. XVII, 2, 1-3). The intensity and extent of Jewish settlement in the Golan and surrounding districts, which reached in the north as far as Damascus and in the east to Naveh, is reflected in the baraita discussing the boundaries of 'Eretz- Yisrael', defined as the 'territory occupied by those who came back from Babylon' (Tosephta, Sheviiit IV; Jerusalem Talmud, Shevieit VI and Demai 11).

Clearly the idea that the Golan is part of halachic Israel has been around far longer than 1967.

Dauphin's paper shows some of the artifacts found as of 1982 that were clearly Jewish in al-Farj in the eastern Golan.

However, they probably came after the destruction of the Temple.

Far more synagogues and other evidence of Jewish settlement has been found since then, especially in Tel Dan, which shows Biblical-era finds, including an Israelite-style four horned altar.

In the end, Israel's claim to the Golan is not Biblical but practical. It must hold the high ground for security reasons in the absence of a trustworthy government in Syria. That was the entire reason Israel allowed the buffer zone of land it conquered after suffering major losses in 1973 to be controlled by the UN for 50 years.

But to say that Jews have no historic claim on the land is simply false.