Facebook in middle of Golan Heights furor

Social networking website Facebook has found itself at the center of a mini-controversy in the Middle East after it started to offer residents of the Golan Heights the choice of selecting either Syria or Israel as their home country.

It was during the Six Day War of 1967 that Israel captured large parts of the Golan Heights from Syria and, as CNN reports, since that time those areas have been classed by the international community as Israeli-occupied territory and not officially a part of Israel. Whilst it does not appear that it was doing so in an attempt to make a political statement, until very recently Facebook only gave residents of the Golan Heights the option of choosing Syria as their home country, the alternative being to leave that particular field on their profile blank. It was a situation that angered some Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights sufficiently for over 2,600 of them to form their own group called "Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria". According to the Los Angeles Times the members of the group were backed in their efforts by an organization based in Jerusalem called Honest Reporting. The organization posted a message on the group's page which said that Facebook had no right to decide how Golan residents should define their national origin. Speaking about the campaign he led to urge Facebook to offer the choice of either Syria or Israel as a home country for those in Golan, the site said that it considered the question of the countries to offer residents in disputed territories on a "case-by-case basis", Alex Margolin said that making a political point was not on the group's agenda. He conceded that at some stage the disputed territory may be returned to Syria but said that at present people who considered themselves Israelis and live under the jurisdiction of Israel wanted to be able to make their loyalties clear. Living alongside the Israeli settlers in Golan are mainly Druze Arabs and they most definitely consider themselves to be Syrian and are displeased that people might gain the impression that they are not necessarily Syrian. For them there is another Facebook group which calls itself "Golan Heights-Syria". Its aim is to promote the idea that Golan is still a part of Syria and will always be so. However for Ofri Bazaz, 18, the change introduced by Facebook, so that Golan is now similar to the West Bank, where users can opt for Palestine or Israel, is a welcome one. She explained:

It's very important on the Internet when somebody comes to my profile on Facebook they will see Israel and not Syria. I'm not Syrian

Support from the Syrian authorities for those in the Golan Heights who are unhappy with Facebook's new policy might be a long time coming. A Syrian scholar, Ammar Abdulhamid, told CNN that Facebook and sites like it are banned in Syria, mainly because activists in the country use them to convey their message.