Eight Syrian brides cross the borders to their husbands in the Golan
Syria, Politics, 3/17/1999

Thousands of evacuees from the occupied Syrian Golan heights tomorrow will hold a collective wedding ceremony that will not bring together the couples and their families in one place because of the conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation on the Golan Heights since 1967.

The "wedding party" states that eight brides from Syria will travel to "the occupied enemy, where the eight young bridegrooms live" to spend their lives under the Israeli occupation or under the Syrian national sovereignty if the Middle East peace talks will resulted in restoring the Golan Heights back to Syria.

The "travel procedures" for the brides will not be organized by the families or relatives of the wedded couples, but by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which carries out the role of mediator to arrange the travel of the women through the bartered wires to their houses in one of the five Syrian towns which are still in the Golan and accommodate 13,000 people.

The representatives of the ICRC, Claude Voila, told the London-based al-Hayat daily that the families of the bride and the bridegrooms contacted the authorities concerned in Syria and Israel asking for a permit to move to the other part, adding that such a permit has been asked for before. "Families of each side contact as to transfer the requests to the other side" so as to reach an acceptable formula from the Syrian and Israeli sides.

The largest recent wedding party was held in September 1998 when five brides moved to the Golan.

Through the Red Cross chances were given to the Syrian youths to study in the Syrian universities, and currently some 300 Syrian youths from the Golan are following their university studies in Syria, whereas another 300 persons, also through the Red Cross visits in the 1970s some 47 marriages between the two split areas were made.

However, in the beginning the first marriages were in the opposite direction (from the Golan to Syria) and during that period some 20 girls from the Golan came to Syria. But as of 1993, they returned to the Golan as it became more evident that Damascus did not care to empty the Golan of its population in light of the great increase in the number of settlers to more than 15,000 in some 40 Israeli settlements and plantations which were established following the Israeli occupation of the Golan in 1967.

Previous Stories:
  EU parliamentarians stress the Arab identity of Jerusalem   (3/15/1999)
  Indyk will not seek Damascus to amend April Understanding   (3/12/1999)
  Golan citizens reject Israeli ID   (2/15/1999)
  Father bids bride goodbye as she crosses one part of Syria to another   (9/5/1998)

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