Israel is referred to as the State of Israel that differentiates it from, for instance, Biblical Israel. Population is 7 million people, 75 percent Jews and 25 percent Arab and other. Interesting is that when we visited Nazareth yesterday, it is a city 80 percent Arab and 20 percent Christian, not a Jewish city as one would have thought!.
Before 1967 war, Israel was 9 miles wide and after the war expanded to 45 miles wide making the country far more defendable. The most important gain was the Golan Heights which meant that the army finally had an excellent view at the top of these mountains, thus being able to give them the advantage they badly needed.
Today we drove up to the Golan Heights quite near the border of Syria. We could in fact see it from the vista point of Quneitra. We had interesting company there because tv stations were there filming the fighting! While there, we saw that a mortar had fallen about 3 miles from where we were and we could also see a huge white cloud of smoke indicating fighting going on the other side of the mountain. If you look at news reports, you will see verification of this story as I went online to find any report of what we saw. Quite sobering.
No comments:
Post a Comment