Touring the Northern border zone
Today, we took the car and drove up the Golan Heights to see the places we read so much about. It is a beautiful area, with big banana, apple and dates groves along the Sea of Galilee, and green rolling hills higher up.
But everywhere, you see traces of war. The minefields are abundant, as are the bunkers and other military installations. Not to mention all the Israelis memorials, often equipped with trophy Syrian tanks or tank turrets.
In the very Northeast, we stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Syrian ghost town of Quneitra, once the regional capital of the Golan Heights (before they were occupied by Israel). Now, Quneitra is in a no-mans-land guarded by the United Nations Observation Mission UNDOF. The viewpoint still had a symbolic gun pointed at Syria (and the UN base in between) - see picture above.
We enjoyed our packed lunch in a lush Apple Orchard just outside the Druze village of Massade. Afterwards, we tried to find another Druze village, Majdal Shams, but managed to get lost on the small and mostly unmarked mountain roads. That proved to be lucky, as we ended up at a Druze holy site with families picnicking in traditional outfits.
Next stop was Kiryat Schmona and Metulla, two Israeli villages/small towns just on the Lebanese borders. Just a week earlier, the rockets rained down here, and there are military strongholds everywhere. We could not go all the way up to the border to Lebanon (called ”the Good Fence”), because some Israelis had gone up to it the day before and yelled insults to Lebanese on the other side. But we came pretty close, just a 100 meters away, before we were stopped by an Israeli Army road block manned by some tired but friendly soldiers and their battle-scarred armoured Humvee-jeep.
In the evening, we drove to the charming old crusader port of Akko, where we had a splendid Calamari-dinner with cool Golan white wine. Afterwards, Femke thoroughly defeated me in Backgammon at a lovely Tea-and-water pipe café.
Touring the Northern border zone
lördag 19 augusti 2006
