Monday May 5, 2008-Northern Israel-The Golan Heights

Okay, I'm dedicating the next 6 blogs to today, because it was really an exciting day! So, I decided to stay at the Tiberias Hostel for Sunday night, so that on Monday I could explore a bit. So I took a bus up to one of the most northern cities in Israel, a place called Qiryat Shemona. I really didn't know what was there, except for the fact that Meir, the hostel manager said they had some kind of sky tram that takes you up to a mountian view. Well when I got there, I couldn't find the skytram, so I just started walking around, there really wasn't much to it. So I stopped a lady on the street and asked her and she said that her taxi guy could find it for me. So I got in the taxi with her. . .







and I met Hosi, a native from the Golan Heights. He said he could show me around the area, so I took him up on it. I thought at first maybe an hour or so, but I ended up riding through the entire Golan area with him for the whole day. It was a great decision because he was able to take me places that I never dreamed of seeing. And Hosi and I became friends, he is the nicest guy.








So the first place he took me was a neat little town right on the Lebanon border, called Metulla, the most northern city in Israel. It was a quaint little town, had a Swiss feel, but it was almost vacant because of the political and military turbulence the permeates the area. The area is populated by Druze inhabitants, a sect of nonconventional Islamic people coming from Lebanon and Syria. Hosi is Druze, but not practicing. Most are farmers and work in agriculture.




The next place we went was to the Lebanon border, right across that fence is Lebanon. It's pretty interesting the tension that exists in this area. And it's no wonder considering that. . . . .











these flags wave right across from that fence. The first is the Lebanon National flag, the middle one is the Palestinian Authority flag, and the yellow is the Hezbollah flag, and if you know anything about the tensions is the Middle East, the Hezbollah is considered to be a major threat to security in this area, they are know internationally as a terrorist group of the Shiite Muslim groups.

Hosi had many opinion about the Lebanese, but next he wanted to take me to meet a good friend of his, who he said was a Born Again Christian . . .hmmm, up here in the Golan?