Refael Nabe, CEO of Mount Hermon Ski Area, has spent nearly every day of the past four winters on the mountain, whose summit straddles the borders of Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
The Israeli Recreation Area of Hermon, the only place in Israel where it regularly snows, attracted 400,000 visitors in the winter of 2022-2023. Some people skied, but most were there just to experience the snow, ride the gondola to the 7,300-foot observation deck, ride sleds and ride the Mount Hermon coaster. Over the summer, management invested in countless upgrades in anticipation of even more visitors.
But this winter, no one paid to visit the year-round tourist attractions in the northern Golan Heights. Hermon Church was closed by military order on October 7, the day Hamas terrorists poured into southern Israel, sparking a war that quickly spread to northern Israel. The mountain has not yet reopened to the public.
No one paid to visit in the winter.
Nave spent much of this winter shuttling back and forth between Hermon and his home in the alpine village of Neve Atif, Israel’s highest Jewish town. Except that he did so while armed with an automatic rifle and in military uniform as a reserve soldier and member of Neve Atif’s security forces.
Hermon, which also serves as a military zone and has soldiers stationed in its rifts even in peacetime, has been under frequent attacks by Hezbollah over the past six months, including Saturday’s attack by Iran. Nabe is on the mountain almost every day, overseeing maintenance work and coordinating with the military.
“The Hermon outpost is under constant shelling,” Neve said in an interview in Neve Atif, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. “We’ve had winters before where we had days off here and there, but not this one.” Israelis flock to Hermon Friday (Credit: SETH J. FRANTZMAN)
This is the first time Hermon has missed an entire season since the ski mountain opened in the winter of 1968-69 after Israel captured the area from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. As a result, the entire mountain-dependent economy suffered, with 300 furloughed Harmon employees as well as hotels, restaurants, sports shops, roadside vendors, and other area businesses dependent on tourists. It is also affecting.
“It’s 100% less than in previous years,” said Talia Weli, owner of a sports store in the nearby Druze town of Masadeh. In addition to bicycles, the sports store also sells sleds, winter coats, gloves, and ski hats. -Round equipment.
“In a normal winter, there is constant traffic here morning and night,” said a Weli employee who gave his name only as Hamed. “There will be lines at restaurants. Friday’s outdoor market, which sells everything from perfumes to vegetables, will be crowded with tourists. This year there was none. There was no snow.”
Israeli military lights appear in the northern area of Har Dov on Mount Hermon, November 13, 2023, as cross-border tensions rise between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel as fighting continues with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Bullets rain. (Jallah Maree/AFP via Getty Images)
Instead of looking for snow, Masade residents scan the skies for rocket and drone attacks. Authorities set up concrete shelters on some streets to protect residents of Masade. Masadeh residents typically do not have air raid shelters in their homes, but Hamed said most bystanders were outside looking up during attacks.
“People go outside to see what’s going to fall,” he says. “A month ago, I saw a drone get shot down.”
On Saturday night, as Iran used more than 300 ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles to attack Israel, air raid sirens in Masadeh sounded four times in 10 minutes around 2 a.m. And on Wednesday, a rocket fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon struck a community center in an Arab town in northern Israel, 90 miles to the west, injuring 18 people.
The town of Majdal Shams, near the Hermon River, serves as the Druze capital of the Golan. Druze pledge allegiance to their homeland according to opaque religious regulations. And since the Golan was taken from Syria during the 1967 war, the local Druze ostensibly remain loyal to their “homeland” of Syria. (Druze living elsewhere in Israel are loyal Israelis, and many serve in Israel’s military.)
Majdal Shams, a Golan Druze town on the slopes of the Hermon Mountains, is the highest town in all of Israel.April 4, 2024. (Uriel Heilman)
But over the decades, enthusiasm for the principle of loyalty to Damascus has waned, especially since the Assad regime stepped up its killing of Syrian civilians in the civil war. Many Golan Druze, especially young people, have acquired Israeli citizenship.
Shabaa Abu Khair runs the View Hotel in Majdal Shams. The hotel is a two-year-old boutique hotel overlooking a small farm, a cherry orchard, and the Syrian border. Last winter, the 13-room hotel was booked out nearly every night, with rooms costing more than $350 a night, including breakfast.
Then October 7th came.
“We were fully booked, but everyone canceled that day because they were running in the reserves,” Abu Khair recalls. Since then, there have been very few guests at the hotel.
Shabaa Abu Khair, manager of Majdal Shams’ View Hotel, said on April 4, 2024 that normally guests would visit the hotel to admire the Syrian hilltops just beyond. Since the war began, guests have been asked to stay away, he said. (Uriel Heilman)
“People are afraid to come here because this is a border area,” she said. “The sirens only go off about once a week, but the roar of Israeli artillery fire on Lebanon can often be heard.”
As she spoke, a Druze family of 10 from Dariyat al-Carmel, just south of Haifa, arrived to check in. They were the only guests scheduled that night.
“The only people who come here now are the Druze,” lamented Abu Khair. “We have no way forward. It’s terrible.”
The Israeli government has provided some compensation to some affected businesses and residents. However, eligibility and amounts depend on a variety of factors, including location and type of business, and compensation is often minimal, non-existent, or late in arriving.
For example, the government only announced in early April that it would extend the business compensation program for January and February. Eligibility requirements for tourism and agriculture-related businesses are relaxed compared to other businesses. Companies in the Golan region are not entitled to the same level of compensation as companies in the evacuation zone of the northern Galilee. Other determining location criteria include what type of Home Front Command restrictions are in place in the area, the amount of military activity, road closures, and the presence of artillery batteries in the area.
The entrance to Mount Hermon is closed to all but military vehicles. On April 4, 2024, Israeli ski resorts come under frequent shelling from Lebanon’s Hezbollah. (Uriel Heilman)
At Hermon, furloughed workers receive only a fraction of their regular paycheck, Naab said.
“It’s a small amount. It’s not enough to survive,” Nave said. “He just received his own payment for November and December, which barely covers his property taxes.”
In Mr. Nabe’s case, he will receive the balance of his regular compensation because he is an active reserve officer. But he does not fit into the majority of Hermon Church’s regular staff, most of whom are Druze.
For these workers, and for everyone in northern Israel, the economic future is uncertain. It is unclear how long the war and its aftermath will last, and the government’s compensation standards are constantly changing.
Sania Abu Saleh has a Druze restaurant on one of the last bends on the windy road to Hermon in Majdal Shams. Next door is a ski equipment rental shop that has been closed all winter.
This ski and snowboard shop in Majdal Shams remained closed throughout the winter of 2024 due to the closure of the Hermon Ski Area due to war on April 4, 2024. (Uriel Heilman)
“Usually everyone stops here to buy Druze pita. They eat warm corn. They drink tea and buy warm sackraf.” – A thickener made from cornstarch, sugar, and spices. It is a milky white drink. “Now I have nothing. I have no people. I have no work. Soldiers stop by from time to time, but not many,” she said.
The gate to Hermon Gate is only a few hundred yards from the road, and there is a constant flow of troops coming and going.
Harmon does not use snowmaking equipment, so skiing is completely dependent on the whims of the weather. Last winter, this mountain allowed him to open ski slopes for 27 days during the season. This winter, the chairlift was operated only when members of the Israel Defense Forces’ mountain divisions needed to train. During a severe snowstorm, members of the unit ventured out into the driving wind and snow to practice reaching outposts on foot in the most extreme conditions.
By early April, the only remaining snow on the mountains was in the higher elevations and mostly within Syrian territory, but the snow-capped peaks were visible from much of the Golan and large parts of northern Galilee. did it. Due to the terrain, there is no actual border fence in the area separating Israel from Syria and Lebanon.
Even in normal years, when Mount Hermon is open to the public, the area remains a heavily patrolled military zone. (Uriel Heilman)
At a European ski expo that Harmon’s CEO attended a few years ago, the snowmaking equipment company invited him to dinner with Lebanese ski industry figures. At first, the Lebanese were surprised to be eating with Israelis, but over the course of dinner, they warmed up to each other, Nabe recalled.
After a long meal, Nave said, the Lebanese confessed that they had been taught from birth that Jews were evil and to be hated, but that night’s experience had shown them otherwise. They ended the night by toasting a vision that peace might one day allow a joint ski pass connecting the ski mountains of Lebanon, Israel and Syria.
Nabe isn’t optimistic these days. On Saturday night during the attack on Iran, Israel fired artillery from both Lebanon and Syria.
“We want peace, but the reality is we have neighbors who don’t want us,” he said. “They have been training for years and years to conquer all of Galilee.”
Nave still has big dreams for Hermon. The most ambitious of these is the opening of a ski-in/ski-out hotel where guests can stay overnight in the area. But for now, he has his sights set on something more mundane: reopening. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
“In my conversation with military command, they said, ‘Let’s talk after the summer,'” Nabe said. “How can I continue like this?”
