Israel Matzav

Why it would be crazy to give the Golan to Syria

We spent the morning this morning picking blueberries and blackberries in a place called Elrom. After stopping off at the Moshav where we are staying to drop off the morning haul, we went to a place called Mizpe Gadot. I took lots of pictures, which I hope to post when I get back, but I want to write about it while it is still fresh in my mind. In the meantime, here's are a couple of pictures I found on line, but they won't tell you too much.

Mizpeh Gadot is a lookout point from the Golan Heights that has a panoramic view of the Hula Valley below. During the period between 1948-67, Syrian troops would sit in the bunkers atop the hill, where they could not be seen, and would shoot down on the Israeli kibbutzim and moshavim in the valley below. An entire generation of Israeli children grew up in bomb shelters, while their parents plowed fields with armored tractors, did guard duty at great personal risk (many were killed) and faced constant fire from the Syrian bunkers.

The area around the bunkers is mined (to this day - many of the Syrian minefields in the Golan have never been removed and they are fenced in, although one often sees cows grazing in areas that are marked as minefields, so someone must know which minefields are real and which are empty. But please don't try to find out!), and there are anti-tank rods that were placed on the road to prevent Israeli troops from getting tanks up the plateau. In retrospect, one sees how miraculous it was that Israel won the war in 1967 and managed to recover all that was lost in 1973. To give this to the Syrians for a piece of paper is simply suicidal.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:16 PM