Buq’ata… History of resisting the occupation and adhering to identity in occupied Golan

Occupied Syrian Golan, SANA- Buq’ata, one of the Syrian villages located in the occupied Syrian Golan behind the brutal Israeli occupation wires, those wires didn’t succeed to separate the soul of their people from the heart of the homeland, embodying the epics of struggle in the face of the occupation and its plans and awaiting for the defeat of the occupation and return to the motherland

Buq’ata is affiliated to Masada area in Quneitra governorate, and it is one of the six villages whose residents did not leave.

Its residents participated in announcing the strike on February 14, 1982, rejecting the Zionist entity’s decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan and rejecting attempts to impose the so-called Israeli identity, where many of its youths were subjected to the most heinous forms of torture in the prisons of the occupation due to their participation in the national resistance against the occupation.

The history of resistance and steadfastness is not new to the people of the village, which suffered greatly as it was attacked by the Ottoman occupation in 1888 and faced the French occupation again in 1925 during the Great Syrian Revolution.

On the history of the village, its location, its geographical and demographic nature, the researcher in history and heritage Khaled Fayad said in an exclusive interview with SANA that it is located in the northern sector of the occupied Syrian Golan and is in the middle of four hills.

According to Fayad, the name of the village, which rises 1070 meters above sea level, goes back to Syriac origins which means the plains, valleys, or the Bekaa. It has a population of approximately 6,500 people as it is the second largest village after Majdal Shams.

The people of Buq’ata derived their strength from the basalt stone, as Fayad mentioned that the old basalt building was expanded with modern concreted housings, where its residents work in cultivating grains, vegetables and fruit trees.

The village is surrounded by several springs, the most important of which is the Spring of al-Salalem.

The people of Buq’ata also joined the popular sit-in staged in 2018, during which they burned the electoral cards distributed by the Israeli occupation authorities regarding elections of the so-called “local councils” and raised the Syrian Arab flag and banners rejecting the occupation’s judaizing policies in Majdal Shams Square.

With their firm belonging to their homeland, Syria, the people of Buq’ata in the occupied Syrian Golan affirm their categorical rejection of the new settlement scheme represented by the installation of wind turbines on citizens’ properties, which aims at displacing the people, confiscating their lands by force, and resisting all forms of arbitrary and aggressive practices of the Israeli occupation authorities.

Nisreen Othman / GH.A.Hassoun

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