When FAI began in December 2011, it was partly in due response to the escalating conflict now known as the Syrian Civil War—eight years of staggering loss, unfathomable violence, and unprecedented suffering. We sought the Lord for years to “open a wide and effectual door”[1] that we might strategically engage the “worst humanitarian crisis since the Holocaust”[2] hemorrhaging out of the “heart of the Arab world.”[3]
We received a call on Christmas 2016, telling us a door was opening—not through northern borders, around where we were already working, but through the south; yet not through Lebanon, and not through Jordan.
Through Israel.
It was almost too good to be true.
As an organization and spiritual family working widely through the Middle East, the story and significance of Israel has always been woven into our DNA. It matters deeply to us that we honor Israel’s past, partner in her present, and invest in her future. When we were offered the opportunity to be part of her historic Good Neighbor Operation in conjunction with the Israeli Defense Forces,[4] we didn’t hesitate to say yes.
We became a formal part of the operation in spring 2017, and mobilized our first medical team over the border in June 2017, working with the IDF’s Good Neighborhood Unit in the northern end of the Golan Heights—1,800 kilometers of volcanic plateau stretching from the Sea of Galilee to the summit of Mount Hermon,[5] where the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel all converge.
The significance of this contested territory is not lost on us, nor the fact that we partnered with Israel’s incredible initiative to build a better neighborhood (nestled against Assad’s agitated army in Syria and Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon) exactly fifty years after Israel secured the Golan in the Six Day War.
What a jubilee.[6]
Before the Golan Heights south and west of Mount Hermon were won by Israel in the Six Day War (as the remaining third of the region, north of Mount Hermon, continues under Syrian sovereignty), it was a militarized zone used by the Syrian regime for lobbing rockets and mortars at Israeli citizens residing in the Hula Valley and along the Galilee. Druze villages and towns sparsely decorating the countryside served as infrequent exceptions to Syrian bases, lookouts, and artillery posts. Hafez al-Assad, father and predecessor to Syria’s current president Bashar al-Assad (who clutched the dynasty to weather and survive the Civil War), used the Sea of Galilee as his private swimming retreat.
Mobilizing artillery, troops, supplies, and other weaponry between Damascus and the Galilee required roads. Even still today, the Golan Heights is a quiet countryside full of wandering cows, small but dignified neighborhoods, growing Israeli wineries, and IDF training bases—largely still connected by these old Syrian tank trails and artillery roads.
In the middle of it all is the Wasset Junction. “Wasset” means “middle” in Arabic, but Hafez affectionately called it the “heart of the Golan.” It was here the Syrian army built quarters, halls, and meeting areas for its officers, where they organized the movement of troops and rockets, and it was where Hafez would get out of the car to stretch his legs before reaching the Galilee for a swim.
The IDF would later sleep in these converted bunkhouses.
In the decades since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli Golan Heights have enjoyed a rare, though imperfect, degree of quietude. Families have founded and built new communities. Several of them are making some of the world’s best wine. And beginning in 2020, it will host FAI’s Regional Headquarters—in one of Assad’s old Wasset offices.
A brick-and-mortar locus of education, tourism, history, and strategic pioneering, it is with great pleasure and privilege that we are announcing the launch of the Golan Heights Legacy Center.
We’re working to build a better neighborhood in the contentious crossroads between Israel and her neighbors, particularly in the north where so many Israeli towns are in the crosshairs of Hezbollah rockets staged across Lebanon and Syria. Converting this old Syrian army building on a Six Day War battlefield is the kind of precious poetry we could not have written for ourselves.
Three years after sending medical teams across the top of the Mount Hermon corridor into forsaken Syrian towns struggling to survive the war, we’re putting roots down in the Golan Heights. Our Legacy Center will be the base of our media and communications messaging, as well as a “road-less-traveled” way for tourists to visit northern Israel, in addition to operating as our Regional Headquarters in the Middle East. Visitors to the Golan Heights Legacy Center will leave with a clear understanding of the relationship between Israel, the Arab world, the Great Commission, the strategic setting of the Golan Heights, as well as how FAI strategically serves Israel locally and advocates for her internationally.
The blueprints are dry and renovation is underway. Help us build this better legacy, this better neighborhood, for a better future here in the Golan Heights.
And then come visit us in 2021. We can’t wait to host you.
[1] 1 Corinthians 16:9
[2] UNHRC. Syrian conflict at five years. 15 March 2016. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2016/3/56e6e3249/syria-conflict-5-years-biggest-refugee-displacement-crisis-time-demands.html, 26 December 2019.
[3] MEMRI. Syria Arab league reinstatement. Retrieved from https://www.memri.org/reports/advance-arab-league-summit-jordan-calls-arab-countries-reinstate-syrias-league-membership#_edn24
[4] See https://israelallianceinternational.com/nonprofit for more information
[5] Deuteronomy 3:9; 4:28; Psalm 68:15; 133:1-3; Matthew 16:16-18
[6] Leviticus 25:10