Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Occupied Golan, SANA- The Israeli occupation has carried out the most atrocious ethnic cleansing project in the occupied Syrian Golan since 1967, destroying 131 villages and 112 farms, forcing more than 130 out of 138 thousand people to leave their homes, in addition to changing its geographical and demographical identity and establishing about 35 illegal settlements, profiting from the Occupied Syrian Golan’s abundant natural resources.
It should be noted that the Israeli occupation’s plan to promote Jewish settlements in the Golan also includes the establishment of huge projects on the pretext of producing green energy, through the construction of large-scale wind turbine farm while it is a thinly-veiled means of confiscating more than six thousand of dunums and building 46 wind turbines, having “no legal validity” and constitutes a “flagrant violation” under international Law-Resolution 497(1981).
Some of these farms were decided to be established on the agricultural lands of the Syrian population, despite their strong opposition to these projects.
One reason for this opposition is that the wind turbines would negatively impact the agricultural sector and confiscate the Syrian residents’ livelihoods, which constitutes an important source of economic independence and morale for the Syrian people of Golan.
Nevertheless, residents of the Occupied Golan denounced the plan as infringing on their lands, having organized protests and strikes against the project benefiting Israeli settlers.
They emphasized that they would never relinquish their Syrian identity , for Golan was and still Syrian, affirming their right to defend their land by all available means.
A number of the residents declared that the project, led by the company Energix, would see locals in three villages – home to nearly 25,000 people – lose thousands of acres in agricultural land, the main source of their livelihood.
Kinda ALMahmoud / Baraa Ali
