Meet the future residents of Trump Heights, Israel’s tribute to U.S. support

BRUCHIM, Golan Heights — Ganadi Pherlman didn’t flinch when a resounding “Boom!” punctured the quiet of his barbed-wire-encircled hamlet. Pherlman, 83, is used to hearing the rumblings of Israel’s military around his settlement in the Golan, a volcanic plateau Israel annexed from Syria after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

“This is Israel, it’s always like this. Over there is Lebanon and over there is Syria,” he said pointing in the direction of Israel’s hostile neighbors.

Nestled in fields of straw, his down-at-the-heel community, currently known as Bruchim, is home to fewer than a dozen aging inhabitants. Pherlman spoke of how he longed to again see children roam the shady paths of the community he helped to re-establish in 1991.

His dream may soon come true as the decaying hamlet is slated to be incorporated into a new settlement named after President Donald Trump. At a ceremony in June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named the future community Trump Heights — a gesture of gratitude for the president’s decision to ditch decades of U.S. foreign policy and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights on March 25.

Ganadi Pherlman, an 83-year-old Russian immigrant who has lived in the half-forgotten hamlet where Trump Heights is slated to be built, is looking forward to seeing more life in his eerily quiet village.Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR for NBC News

But it is unclear whether the plans will ever become reality if Netanyahu is not re-elected this week — his right-wing Likud party is currently running neck-and-neck in the polls with the centrist Blue and White party. Some argue it is little more than a P.R. stunt, and that Trump Heights will never be more than a sign.

Pherlman nonetheless says he’s thrilled by the prospect of a new community named after the American president.

“Trump is right, this land is part of Israel,” said Pherlman, a former dog breeder, from the mainroom of his small crumbling cottage sparsely decorated with photographs of his children or himself as a Russian serviceman. “The village is a gift for him.”

But not all residents of the Golan Heights will be rolling out the welcome wagon for more Israelis, whose communities in the region are considered illegal under international law. Many living here also object to the new settlement and the president’s meddling in regional politics. As the new name shows, the Trump administration’s full-throated support of Israel’s right-wing government goes much further than any other U.S. administration.

Trump is more popular in Israel than in almost any other nation, with 69 percent of Israelis expressing confidence in the president, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

“Israel is the one country in the world where Trump is popular, because he is using his political bulldozer to support the right wing,” said Hady Amr, who served as deputy special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama.

In 1967, Israel seized the Golan Heights in a six-day war against Syria, Egypt and Jordan, which saw some 130,000 Syrians forcibly transferred or displaced deeper into Syrian territory, according to local Arab rights group Al-Marsad. Israel annexed the territory in a move that was condemned by the international community as “null and void.”

Decades later, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that some 40,000 people live in the region, less than half of them Jewish. The rest are Syrian Druze, a sect of Shiite Islam, and a small Alawite community — the sect of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

For the most part, the settlers and Syrians live separately, with Israelis residing in fenced-off communities and Druze life centered around the hillside town of Majdal Shams, whose panoramic views over southwest Syria now include a gray-snaking border fence.

Hodaya Kerman, a religiously observant Jewish tour guide, is thankful that Trump demonstrated that the Golan Heights was an “inseparable” part of Israel.

“I think he should be commended for all he is doing for Israel,” said Kerman, 20. She and her husband Eyal are among some 400 families on a list of people interested in settling in Trump Heights, according to the Golan regional council.

Hodaya Kerman lives in Haspin, in the Golan Heights. She and her husband would like to settle in Trump Heights.Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR for NBC News

Theirs would be the first new community to be established in the Golan Heights for 30 years, according to the council.

“It’s like a gift,” Kerman said.

Trump’s resolve reminded her of Israel’s struggle to justify its own existence, she said.

“If people in the early days were worried about what people were going to say, the country would never have developed,” she said. Most countries did not recognize Israel when Jews first declared its establishment in 1948 and the country would spend the following decades fighting neighbors in a series of bloody wars, with tensions continuing today.

Support among Jewish Israelis for keeping the Golan Heights has been consistently high for decades, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. Israel regards the area as a strategic asset because its hills — which still contain the remnants of Syrian guns — overlook northern Israeli towns, particularly near the Sea of Galilee. They stress that they won the region in a “defensive war.”

Since becoming president, Trump has endorsed Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — which both the Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital — and closed the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.

Salman Fakhraldeen, one of more than 20,000 Syrians living in the region, bemoaned Trump’s disregard for international conventions, and said the president’s bolstering of Israel’s position was better suited to a bygone era.

“He’s trying to be the big brother of the world,” said Fakhraldeen, 65, who remembers the day Israeli soldiers occupied his hometown of Majdal Shams, burning the Syrian flag above his school and offering children like himself candy. “He’s interfering in our interests.”

But the former construction worker acknowledged that neither Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty nor the new settlement would change much on the ground.