Golan Heights

A big piece of Golan Heights in the south-west of Syria has been occupied by the Israelis in the 1967 war. To see how much land this involves, we drove down the road with Gefar and Ebba to Quneitra. It is a Syrian town that the Israelis systematically destroyed when they retreated from the 1973 ceasefire lines.
Far down the road, pass the UN checkpoint, we came to the ghost town of Quneitra, greeted as usual by an Hafez Assad statue. There we were stopped by a moustached security man in leather jacket and a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. One can see these men in front of every governmental building in the country. We got an official escort wearing Adidas training suit. He took us first to a hospital, then to an orthodox church, a school, and a mosque. The remains of the hospital have become an exhibit demonstrating the approach of Israeli soldiers. The sheet of metal attached to the building says ˝Golan Hospital. Destructed by Zionists and changed it to firing target˝. All buildings we saw have one thing in common. They are completely shelled and partially bulldozed, painted with odd graffiti in Cyrillic saying Chechnya. Our escort didn’t know the graffiti’s origins. I found comparison appropriate. Grozny must look the same; although Russians would not allow anyone see it.
On the Syrian front line, so close that one could see Israelis farming a field, I asked a lieutenant commanding the outpost if he thinks they will ever get an occupied land back. He said, God willing, the land beyond this town, from the heights of Mount Hermon boasting high-tech Israel’s radar stations down to the Sea of Galilee, is all supposed to be liberated one day.