photos: touring with the Dintamans
On Sunday, Eric Kennel and I were invited to drive around the Golan Heights and explore for a day by Benjamin, an Italian/German guest staying at the Fauzi. It felt like we were in another country with a definite eerie post-civilized feeling.
The photos speak for themselves, view them here.
Until 1967, a population of diverse religious followings: Sunni Muslim or Druze, Circassian, Christian Greek Orthodox (whether Syriac or Armenian) peopled the Golan, an excellent, fertile territory thanks to ancient volcanic activity, cultivated by peasants on their small-holdings. Today, piles of stones and dilapidated huts dot the countryside; these ruins are unique testimony to the tragic expulsion of the population by Israeli military forces. In all, 133 villages, encampments or hamlets were partially or completely demolished.
At the end of Road 98 are the ruins of the demolished village of Qushniyeh. It is easy to identify, for it was not completely destroyed, but converted for some time into an Israeli military training center. The mosque and some buildings, riddled with bullet-holes, remain standing. Before its destruction, Qushniyeh had nearly 3,000 inhabitants, a majority of whom were Circassian; the villagers were generally farmers, craftsmen or office workers.
