Al-Quneiytra

I got my permit to go to Al-Quneiytra, the Syrian city at the entrance of the Golan Heights, and this morning set off on my little yellow bike, southwards along the Eastern Lebanon Mountain Range (or, according to the "Western" name, the "Anti-Lebanon Mountain Range"... hmm, that's not political at all), past olive fields and apple orchards. As you get closer to the Golan, the breeze gets cooler and carries the smell of pine. It's a refreshing change from the gridlock and grime of Damascus.

Today was also the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. I suppose people celebrate that not only by eating and congratulating each other, but actually giving plastic guns to their young sons. So all along the road I was being shot at by hordes of little brats. One of them actually gave me a welt on my belly... what the hell happened to Legos? Maybe those were the "arms sales" the Russia recently announced to Syria. I think the Syrians should be wary of those Russian arms; the last time they used them, they lost the Golan.

I left home at 6am, and 4 hours, 40 miles, one flat tire, one shwarma, two nasty Spam sandwiches and one cucumber later, I found myself in the Liberated City. It's pretty liberated: no one is living there, except for the few secret police who accompanied me around the city, showing me the ruins of houses, hospitals and churches the Israelis left behind as they retreated. From the third floor of the bombed-out, bullet-ridden hospital (one guard takes his position on the second floor which must be really boring), you can see the mountains of the occupied Golan Heights, with a huge Israeli surveillance base watching us.

After a few jokes, my police companions lighten up, and the officer tells his subordinate to ride my bike and he offers to take me around on his motorcycle. For a second, I think about equality and comraderie, but then quickly brush that thought out of my mind and happily jump on the motorcycle. We go past more houses, mined-areas and generally depressing scenes from a city that once was home to some 16,000 people, according to Officer "Can't-Tell-You-My-Name". When I ask him about peace with Israel, he candidly admits, "In Sha Allah". He catches me off-guard when he says that Syria would be willing to share the precious water of Lake Tiberias with the Israelis, but says that Israel doesn't want that, and I think he might be right. The Golan Heights is one of the more fertile areas of Syria, and now of Israel, and an important source of water in the region. The Golan Heights have also entered the realm of cyber-war recently, with Facebook allowing their users in the occupied territories to choose between describing their location as "Israel or Syria".

The most recent international efforts to return the occupied territory to the Syrians were interrupted when Syria unilaterally ended them in protest of last December's Israeli-massacre of Gazans. Obama's recent efforts have failed to produce anything, so for now, it seems that Al-Quneiytra will remain a ghost town, frequented by a few crazy gringos on yellow bikes.