Neve Ativ is a small Alpine

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

-styled Israeli settlement

Israeli settlement

An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...

 (moshav

Moshav

Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...

) in the Golan Heights, founded in 1972, and located on the slopes of Mount Hermon

Mount Hermon

Mount Hermon is a mountain cluster in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range. Its summit straddles the border between Syria and Lebanon and, at 2,814 m above sea level, is the highest point in Syria. On the top there is “Hermon Hotel”, in the buffer zone between Syria and Israeli-occupied...

, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) west of Majdal Shams

Majdal Shams

Majdal Shams is a Druze village in the northern part of the Golan Heights, in the southern foothills of Mt. Hermon. Since the June 1967 Six-Day War, the village has been controlled by Israel, first under martial law, but since 1981 under Israeli civil law, and incorporated into the Israeli...

. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights illegal under international law

International law and Israeli settlements

The international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories illegal under international law, but Israel maintains that they are consistent with international law because it does not agree that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the...

, but the Israeli government disputes this.

Community

About 37 families live there. The name Ativ is an acronym for four fallen soldiers from the Egoz Reconnaissance Unit

Egoz Reconnaissance Unit

The Egoz Reconnaissance Unit is an elite special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces that specializes in guerrilla and anti-guerrilla warfare among other things. The Egoz Battalion is part of the Northern Command's Golani Brigade....

 killed in action

Killed in action

Killed in action is a casualty classification generally used by militaries to describe the deaths of their own forces at the hands of hostile forces. The United States Department of Defense, for example, says that those declared KIA need not have fired their weapons but have been killed due to...

 in the Golan: Avraham Hameiri, Tuvia Ellinger, Yair Elegarnty, and Binyamin Hadad.

Ski resort

The moshav's main industry is tourism

Tourism

Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...

. Neve Ativ operates a thriving ski resort

Ski resort

A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing and other winter sports. In Europe a ski resort is a town or village in a ski area - a mountainous area, where there are ski trails and supporting services such as hotels and other accommodation, restaurants, equipment rental and a ski lift system...

 on 25 kilometres (15.5 mi) of ski runs on the slopes of the 9232 feet (2,813.9 m)-above-sea-level Mount Hermon is the closest organized lodging

Lodging

Lodging is a type of residential accommodation. People who travel and stay away from home for more than a day need lodging for sleep, rest, safety, shelter from cold temperatures or rain, storage of luggage and access to common household functions.Lodgings may be self catering in which case no...

 area for visitors to the area.

The ski resort was destroyed in the Yom Kippur War

Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War , also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria...

. The following season, it was back in business as Israel's only ski resort. Frank Riley wrote in the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, "This is a mountain and an experience that should happen at least once in every skier's lifetime." The ski season lasts three months, on average (December–March). In one weekend in January 2000, the ski site had 11,000 visitors. Later that month, the leaders of Neve Ativ expressed a hope to turn the ski resort into a joint Israeli-Syrian venture, opening it on both the Israeli and Syrian sides as an international tourist attraction.

Arab-Israeli conflict

Israel and Syria fought major battles in the area in 1967 and 1973, and it remains a strategic military position. Neve Ativ was built on the land of the destroyed Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n village of Jubata ez-Zeit

Jubata ez-Zeit

Jubata ez-Zeit was a Syrian village situated in the far north of the Golan Heights. According to an Arab resident of a nearby town, it had a population of around 1,500 to 2,000 people prior to the Six-Day War...

.