Fourteen years after capturing the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, Israel's parliament passed the Golan Heights Law in December 1981, applying Israeli law and administration to the territory in a move widely understood as annexation, though Israel avoided the word explicitly. Some 20,000–25,000 Syrian Druze and Alawite residents remained in northern Golan villages such as Majdal Shams; most have not accepted Israeli citizenship. Roughly 20,000-25,000 Israeli settlers now live in dozens of settlements across the Golan. Syria continues to demand full withdrawal, and the territory's status remains a central unresolved issue between the two countries.
Israel's Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli civil law, jurisdiction, and administration to the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 war and never returned.
Around 13,000-17,000 Syrians, almost all Druze in five villages including Majdal Shams and Buq'ata, remained in the Golan in 1981; the great majority of the pre-war population, estimated at 100,000-130,000 across some 130 villages, had fled or been expelled during and after the 1967 war and their villages were destroyed. Most of those remaining refused Israeli citizenship and hold permanent residency.
The Golan Heights Law of 14 December 1981 was a legislative act and caused no significant loss of life. It provoked a prolonged general strike by the Syrian Druze of the Golan in 1982, in which residents refused Israeli identity papers, but no deaths are recorded as a result of the law. The lethal events on the Golan belong to the 1967 and 1973 wars and to the displacement of roughly 100,000 Syrians in 1967, which are separate entries.
Israel