MORE than three million people have signed “the world’s longest love letter,” proclaiming the occupied Golan Heights to be Syrian territory in a national unity initiative started by 14 women on bicycles last week.

The women, from different parts of Syria, started collecting signatures to the letter in Sweida province in the south-west, where they held a demonstration at the government building and unfurled the national flag.

They have since taken the roll of paper to Daraa, Quneitra, Hama and Aleppo provinces, where it has been signed with declarations of love and loyalty under the title “Come Together.”

The text of the letter rejects the “illegal occupation of the Golan Heights,” a territory seized by Israel in the 1967 six-day war. 

The United Nations condemned Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan, branding it “null and void and without international legal effect.” The international community views the area as belonging to Syria.

However, US President Donald Trump inflamed regional tensions earlier this year when he unilaterally proclaimed that “the United States recognises that the Golan Heights are part of the state of Israel,” becoming the first and only country to do so.

Event organiser Ehssan Jadallah al-Nassir said: “Signing the longest letter of loyalty to the occupied Syrian Golan is a clear and popular response to the declaration of the US President Donald Trump on the occupied Syrian Golan, affirming that Golan is in the hearts of all the Syrians.”

Mithqal al-Qassem, who chairs the farmers’ union in Daraa, said: “Trump’s declaration on the occupied Syrian Golan came after he lost the terrorist war waged against Syria.

“Golan is a Syrian Arab land and it will return to the homeland sooner or later.”

The letter will be delivered to the UN representative in Damascus “to express rejection” of Mr Trump’s declaration and “affirm that Syrians stand by the people of Golan.”