Day 13 - Are we in a war zone?

Well today was quite the tour day for sure. It’s not everyday you get this close to a war zone.

So our day started off with us loading up into jeeps and driving some very infrequently used rocky roads. As we turned off onto this road (if you can call it that) this is the first thing we saw.

Apparently the army was doing exercises in the Golan Heights for the past couple weeks and today was no exception. We saw several tanks drive off on maneuvers along with the various support vehicles. Quite interesting indeed.

Parts of the road we were on were made by the Romans 2,000 years ago, and as I previously mentioned there is a good chance they haven’t been used much since then.

Also, just to make things interesting we saw several of these signs

Apparently before the Syrian’s left the Golan Heights, they planted several mines, up to 600 per square mile. The Israeli army didn’t have the time or resources to remove them so put up some fencing and these signs.

Anyway, at the end of the road was an Israeli observation point. And the video below helps explain  what they are looking at.

As if being this close to Lebanon wasn’t bad enough, we then drove east to check out what was happening in Syria. The next two videos will explain what we saw.

Footnote: So this is the headlines in the news later that day

Israeli warplanes strike target in Syria’s Golan Heights
Mon Aug 22, 2016 7:31PM

Israeli jets have carried out an airstrike in Syria’s Golan Heights, claiming that the attack was in retaliation for stray fire from Syrian fighting factions that landed inside Israel.

On Monday, the Israeli army announced that it had hit a "Syrian army launcher" after a stray shell from fighting in Syria landed close to an Israeli fence in central Golan. Nobody was injured in either of the incidents.

So what happened is, the day before, Syria fired a mortar round just inside the Israeli border about a mile or two from where we were standing, so a couple hours after we left, an Israeli fighter jet dropped a present for the Syrian’s. I missed what could have been a great photo op but was ok with getting the heck out of there.

The remainder of the day had us touring a winery which is just what I needed after this.