QUNEITRA A BAD TAST

QUNEITRA - A BAD TASTE IN MY MOUTH

Yesterday we went to Quneitra.  To go there we had to get a special military pass as Quneitra is, or was, the capital of the Golan Heights and is the emblematic symbol of Israeli occupation, because the town and a great deal of territory nearer to Damascus was taken during the 1973 Six Day War.  Subsequently, part of the territory was retaken by Syria but most of the Golan Heights remain in Israeli hands today. To get an idea of just how serious the invasion was, we only have to realize that Quneitra is only forty kilometres from Damascus, and Saasaa, which is as far as the Israeli troops came, is only about 25-30 kilometres from Damascus.  The area between Saasaa and Quneitra was later recovered.

We took the same road we have taken on other occasions passing Mount Hermon on our right.  However, this time, when we reached the military checkpoint at Saasaa, we did not have to turn around but presented our military pass.  Our documentation was checked and our names were registered in a large book. There were several UN buses in front of us as the UN have patrols in the area, manned mainly by Canadians and Scandinavians,  to check that no arms are being stockpiled and generally keep an eye on things.  The truth of the matter, as far as I could see, is that they drive about and look at maps and not much else.  We then carried on to Khan Arnabeh, an old caravanserai where there is now a village, and there our papers were checked once again and the time of our passing recorded in another book.  After that we continued to the entrance to Quneitra itself, where were had to present our pass once more and a guide had to get into the car, as no unaccompanied civilians are allowed into the place.  

What desolation!  Not a house was left standing. The Israeli troops bombarded everything and what was left was razed to the ground.  We were taken to the hospital - full of shell holes and bullet holes and a complete ruin.  A yellow sign on the wall says “Destructed by the Zionists and used for target practice”.  (Their spelling mistakes, not mine). Soldiers guard the ruin (from what I do not know) and the UN have built or rehabilitated some offices next door.  While we were there, four Scandinavian soldiers drove in with a flourish and climbed up importantly with ordnance survey maps in their hands.  To do what?  Swallows were flying in and out of the ruin. From what had been the roof of the hospital we could see the whole panorama. Only the Orthodox Church and the mosque were not bombarded, and these are the only two buildings now standing amid the ruins of lives and homes.  

After that we went to the Museum which is open.  Downstairs it contains some exhibits from places, such as Banyas, which used to belong to Syria but are now in Israeli hands.  Upstairs is a series of photographs of Quneitra before the invasion and the reality of today.  The garden around the museum, now overgrown, is full of sweet-smelling roses and, looking down from the rooftop, the olive groves, now untended, stretch out across the land.  Only the odd sheep is to be seen grazing among the ruins.  On every hill around are modern radar masts and equipment because virtually all of the surrounding countryside now belongs to Israel.  I picked a pink rose.

Our last stop on this tour of insanity was the barbed wire fence which marks the present boundary.  We looked across at the fields on the other side, well tended with the hay already cut and baled, olive groves and vineyards.  The mililtary people at the post were very attentive and were prepared to answer any questions we might have had to ask, but the guide was in a hurry it seems and was not keen on us spending much time there.  The Israeli settlement where the people who cultivate the land live is about eight kilometres on the far side of the hill about a mile or two away, and we could see it from the wire fence.

This fence now blocks the road to the Galilee and Tiberias. Banyas, where many of the archeological exhibits at the musem came from, in Greek times was known as Paneas  after the god Pan who was worshipped at a sacred grotto there which marked the source of the Jordan River.  Later, under Herod and his son Herod Agrippa, Banyas was known as Caesarea Philippae which is how it is referred to in the Gospels.  Apparently Banyas is a delightful place with rushing streams and shady trees, but, alas, it is now on the Israeli side and consequently inaccessible to us.

We left Quneitra and drove back to Khan Arneyyeh, dropping our guide off on the way.  At Khan Arneyyeh a bedouin festival was under way, the tents set up to form a rectangle and the men dancing in the centre of the rectangle.  When we stopped to have a look, we were invited to join the festivities, but I felt so sick from visiting the site of so much destruction and death that I could not stay.


Maybe the feeling I had at Quneitra was the same feeling the dog got at the entrance to the tombs at Palmyra.  Death must leave vibrations behind and violent death even more palpable ones.  Whatever the reason, I felt ill and the eerie sensation of the peaceful countryside all around the site of so much killing and death and destruction was overwhelming.  I have never been able to understand war and, after that experience, I think I understand it even less.  What is worse, the amount of indoctrination that goes on in the name of war, poisoning young people’s minds with ideas of patriotism and “might is right”, is totally immoral and, in my view, can only lead to further confrontation in the future.  Of course, that is precisely what states seek to do.  That way they have eager and willing cannon fodder for their own purposes.  In the case of Israel, they can also draw on a ceaseless flow of young Jews from all over the world going to Israel to make aliyeh who are anxious to prove their Jewishness.  An example of this I have also seen, and the result of such indoctrination is truly frightening, when a nice young man you have known for years can suddenly turn into a kind of fanatic prepared to do whatever he is ordered to do for the sake of some abstract ideal, because the country he is fighting for gave him nothing. I think humanity is basically stupid.  And then, in the midst of such stupidity, there are beautiful things like music and art and all the manifestations which raise humanity out of the mire of its own baseness.  However, and despite what we may have been taught about being the “only intelligent beings in creation” (what highminded balderdash!), we have a long way to go to reach the levels of other beings such as whales and dolphins who can also make music and communicate, probably better than we can, if we were only smart enough to be able to understand.  

The only consolation was that we did not see a single plastic bag or piece of rubbish in the whole area - because there is nobody there!

Qui seminant in lacrimis
In exsultatione mettent!

May 23 1998