The Golan Heights

[Back home, Petros asks me: “What was the worst bit?”. It was as follows.]

I have been here before, with the Peace Cycle, in 2006. The point is to go to the Shouting Hill and yell messages through a loudspeaker; there are loudspeakers on the other side of the UN-patrolled valley, and this has been the method of communication between families divided by Israel’s occupation for 40 years. (I don’t know about mobiles. Perhaps they carry on like this just to annoy the Israelis living there – I’m intrigued to know what the settlers think about random foreigners yelling at them from time to time about peace.)

This visit is very different from 2006. There are many more people on the trip, and the sponsors are much more powerful: everyone was given a Syrian flag, and the observation platform is covered with women enthusiastically supporting an oppressive dictatorship.

It makes me angry. And then the speeches start, and it makes me cry. The last time was with dear Syrian friends, and we laughed about the Israeli houses being so much nicer than those on the Syrian side – we suggested (in whispers) that the Syrians over there just shut up and take Israeli citizenship, with the jobs, the money, the education and generally higher quality of life that that entails.

Of course the land, in international law, belongs to Syria, and so some element of justice is on their side, but there is still no need for the nationalism. I ask Detta about it. “I hate all flags” she says, “but there was nothing I could do about it this time”. She’s in a difficult position, I can see, given the sponsors are part-owned (at least) by the president's family.