As President Donald Trump begins his second term, preparations are in full swing in Trump Heights, a tiny town in the northern Golan Heights.
The community was established in 2020, named for Trump in honor of the US recognition, during his first term, of the area as belonging to Israel.
Construction of permanent homes will soon replace a trailer park and usher in a dramatic increase in population.
“It’s about to start right about now,” said Yarden Freimann, Trump Heights’ community coordinator. The current population of 26 families totaling about 100 people is expected to quadruple, he said.
Situated atop a windy hill, Trump Heights is within view of Mount Dov, a flashpoint for fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Also visible are the snowy caps of Mount Hermon. Israeli troops captured its higher, eastern part in December amid a violent political overthrow in Syria, which had controlled the entire Golan until 1967 and used it to target Israeli communities below with deadly rocket fire.
The town overlooks one of the many suspected minefields that dot the Golan’s treeless scenery, dominated by black basalt rocks nestled in grasses. The vegetation is lush green in winter but turns into a yellow blanket in summer. It is interrupted only by the springs and streams that crisscross this strategically crucial and untamed part of Israel, which at night echoes with the calls of jackals and wolves.
Asked how the residents felt about Trump’s return to office, Freimann steered clear of wading into US politics. The 40-year-old father of four did say that Trump’s “recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights is very meaningful to us. It’s what made this place come true. We’re a small community now, but we’re growing and it’s part of developing Israel and guarding its borders.”
The name could attract residents and donors, Freimann said, and it makes the town a likely destination for a presidential visit if Trump lands in Israel during his second term.
But the Trump connection also brings unwanted attention. Following Trump’s election, international media visited here, depicting the town as an “illegal settlement” because much of the world still considers the status of the Golan to be disputed.
The name may have also made Trump Heights a symbolically desirable target for Hezbollah, which appeared to single it out for rocket attacks, although that may have been connected to the large army base that borders the town.
Trump Height residents interviewed for this report spoke positively of the president, but their answers made it clear that their attention is focused closer to home than to Washington.
“I wish him well,” Alon Israel, a 31-year-old father of two, said of Trump. “I hope he’s a force for good when it comes to Israel and the world. Beyond that, there’s no particular joy here that he’s entering office: We’re about building our family right here, in the Land of Israel.”
Israel and his wife, who’s a nurse, moved here 25 years ago from Metula, a Lebanese border-adjacent town that was heavily damaged during the recently paused war with Hezbollah. A former developer of social programs for youths, Alon is planning to open a bed-and-breakfast in Ramat Trump to cater to skiers bound for nearby Mount Hermon.
Tourism, farming and social services are among the few sectors offering employment to the 50,000-odd residents of the Golan, a rural area about the size of Los Angeles that is roughly a two-hour drive from the nearest major city, Haifa.
It’s easy to see how someone might feel isolated living in Trump Heights, but Alon, who is a religious-Zionist Jew, said that’s “not an issue. This is such a tightknit and diverse community that I feel more plugged-in socially than ever since we moved here,” he said. A microcosm of Israel’s Jewish society, the town has secular and religious families living — and interacting intensively — next door to one another. Recently, two haredi families moved in.
“It’s what I like best about the place: The diversity,” said Alon.
The Druze of the Golan are part of life at Trump Heights. The town has a Druze kindergarten teacher at its nursery (the only educational facility in town).
During the visit by JNS, Freimann met with a Druze contractor who dropped in to check if his services were required. “We haven’t started building yet,” Freimann told the man from the Druze town of Buqata. But he took down the man’s phone number and asked if his wife was interested in joining the teaching staff.
Trump Heights’ diversity is its “cornerstone as it expands,” Freimann said.
Trump Heights has no grocery store, post office, cash machine, school or clinic. Public transportation is infrequent and unreliable, locals said.
Each trailer has a small fortified room, but the town lacks communal fortified spaces, as some other at-risk towns have.
“We really felt the absence of something like that during the war,” said Freimann. The town’s border proximity provided little safety buffer during the many rockets and drone alerts it experienced.
“It meant the kindergarten was shut down and people couldn’t congregate. We were basically confined to quarters,” Freimann recalled. Most of the town’s men, including Alon Israel, were called up for IDF reserve service.
Such challenges are likely part of the reason for the recent demise of a town called Bruchim, which was established in the early 2000s where Trump Heights now stands. The new town uses some of the structures left from Bruchim, mainly for administrative purposes.
Bruchim’s collapse, and the absence of new communities in the Golan in the past 15 years at least, pour extra meaning into Trump Heights’ mission, Freimann said. “I mean, yeah, it’s named for President Trump but, more important, it’s the first town established in so many years in this critical part of the country.”
But won’t Trump Heights end up like Bruchim?
“Look, so far so good: We have a waiting list, and we’re about to break ground,” Freimann replied, noting that the government has invested tens of millions of dollars in developing the place.
And then, he acknowledged, there’s the name. “Maybe President Trump gave this place the push it needed to succeed.”