A wedding day is supposed to be a day of great happiness for the bride. But for Nihal Arin, it was bittersweet.

On 25 September 2008, Nihal, a 24-year-old Druze woman said "I do" to the man she loved. On the same day she had to say goodbye to her parents, siblings and hometown in the occupied Golan. To marry her Druze cousin who lives in Syria proper, she had to make the painful decision of exchanging her Israeli identification card for Syrian citizenship, and thereby renounce her right to return home.

Israel seized the Golan from Syria during the six-day war in 1967, and has occupied the territory ever since. Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations, and a buffer zone between them separates members of the Druze community, estimated at 21,000 inhabitants in the occupied Golan and many more in Syria.