‘One of biggest tourist sites in region’

TRUMP HEIGHTS, Israel — Israelis are lining up in droves to settle down in a burgeoning Golan Heights settlement named after former and soon-to-be-again President Donald Trump.

Roughly 50 to 100 residents currently live in Trump Heights, an enclave tucked away deep in deserted former Syrian territory — but another 2,000 are on the waiting list to move in.

”Trump Heights is one of the biggest tourist sites in the region,” said Yaakov Selavan, deputy head of the regional council, to The Post.

Trump’s name is an especially big draw because he was the first — and only — foreign leader to recognize the region of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory during his previous presidential term.

“Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights is something very dear to me and to all of us,” said Yarden Friman, Trump Heights’ de facto mayor. “And I’m optimistic about the future; we haven’t had a single [air raid] alarm since the ceasefire with Hezbollah.”

Building a large and permanent population in Trump Heights isn’t just a fad because of the president-elect’s current popularity, either — it’s viewed as a national security imperative.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week announced a goal to double the Golan region’s population, which now sits at about 50,000 people.

“Strengthening the Golan Heights is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time,” Netanyahu said in a statement last week. “We will continue to hold on to it, make it flourish and settle it,”

Pro-terror leftists sneer that the region’s residents are “settlers,” using the term as a slur. But Trump Heights residents are actually like the American pioneers who settled the West, building communities such as Trump Heights that would otherwise lie abandoned and undeveloped.

The major difference is that these Israeli settlers face a persistent threat of terrorism by a mass of groups in the neighboring regions, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north. In exchange for living there, the Israeli government offers the land to settlers for free.

Yedidya Ostroff, 31, and his family were among the first to move into the community after evacuating from another settlement even closer to Lebanon just a few months ago. Ostroff now spends his days fixing up old homes and building new housing in Trump Heights.

“This is a really special community, really good people, and it’s also mixed with religious people and non-religions,” he said.

Asked for his thoughts on moving to a new community named after Trump, Ostroff said he thinks the president-elect, “especially this [next administration], is good for us.

“I like the idea that he claimed Golan is for Israel,” he said.

Walking through the nascent settlement, the sound of children’s laughter is juxtaposed against the sight of multiple sandbagged defensive points where residents can take cover if fighting off invaders — like what happened Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas terrorists attacked the small Kibbutzim near Israel’s border with Gaza.

Reminders of that tragedy about three hours away are found in Trump Heights, with the photos and names of victims hanging from an olive tree in the middle of the settlement.

The people here — as well as Netanyahu’s government — believe that their very presence in the region contributes to Israeli security, particularly amid the uncertainty of the future of the region’s northeastern neighbor, Syria.

“People think about it as occupied territory. It’s coming from not understanding the facts of not knowing the history of the Golan Heights,” Selavan said. “It’s not, it hasn’t been a flourishing area of civil life led by the Syrian government.

“Before that, it was a lot of army bases and campsites overlooking Israeli Jewish towns, shooting missiles at them, threatening their lives. And when Syria moved out of here, that’s the first time in the past century that there had been education, there was flourishing civilian life.

”So I think we really made a difference where there were missiles, now we have children and families,” he added.

The Israeli cabinet recently approved a plan to contribute $11 million to Golan communities such as Trump Heights to support education, renewable energy and absorbing new residents in the region.

Still, its residents say they need further support. Building communities from the ground up is expensive.

The residents said they feel grateful to Trump for even his recognition of the region as Israeli territory, and they celebrated his 2024 election. Having “such a big country” acknowledge their right to exist there was validating, Ostroff said.

”I believe Trump will do good things in our world,” he said.

Trump Heights was under the greatest threat from Hezbollah before the ceasefire a few weeks ago. Residents told The Post that air-raid sirens blared near daily during the strife, so while just a handful of houses have been set up in the village, concrete bomb shelters are prevalent in the small community.

Now new threats have emerged with the upheaval in Damascus.

The rebels that overthrew the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria were supported by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supports the Muslim Brotherhood organization that backs regional terrorist groups, Israeli politicians told The Post.

Ostroff said he at least feels more secure in Trump Heights now that Israeli troops are deploying to the region to create a buffer zone between Syria and the Golan.

That safety will help bring back the region’s tourism industry, which boomed with MAGA fans after Trump Heights was established in 2019, residents said.