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Help comes with dangerous strings for Syrian Druze town

The Golan Heights town of Hadar has been suffering essentially siege conditions throughout the Syrian war, surrounded by the warring factions and unfriendly neighbors and manipulated by aid from both the regime and Israel.

A portrait of Syrian President  Hafez al-Assad on January 19 at the entrance of the village of Hadar in the Syrian side of Golan Heights close to Mount Haramoun which is a stratigic site that Israel occupied with Golan Heights in 1967.The Golan is at the centre of Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations. - RTXJG3W
An image of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad sits at the entrance of the village of Hadar on the Syrian side of Golan Heights close to Mount Haramoun on Jan. 19, 2000. Assad died five months later and was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad. — REUTERS/Khaled Al Hariri

HADAR, Golan Heights — As the Syrian war continues into its seventh year with no sign of resolution, one town on the edge of Syria’s Golan Heights has had to fend off both opposition-led offensives and Israel's subjugation attempts over the last six years almost entirely on its own.

Hadar, a Druze town with a population of 10,000, according to local officials, has a unique story. Nestled on the Syrian face of Jabal al-Sheikh, Hadar directly faces the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where the Shouting Valley separates it by just a few hundred meters from the Israeli-occupied Druze town of Majdal Shams. A few hundred meters up Jabal al-Sheikh, perched on its peak, sits one of Israel’s largest military intelligence stations. It carefully monitors all activity in the Golan on one side and in Lebanon’s Shebaa and beyond on the other.

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