Looking towards Israeli border post in Golan Heights

200m away, I can just about make out a Blue Star and the words ‘WELCOME TO ISRAEL,’ painted in bold, capital letters across the roof of what appears to be a gas-station type construction, here out in the middle of nowhere. A tarmac road runs from where I stand right up to it and continuing, I guess, all the way to Tel Aviv eventually. Physically, there’s no reason why I can’t just duck under the horizontal bar and walk across. Politically, it’s lethal.

I can faintly hear grasshoppers chirping across the waves of fields ahead of me. “It is ok to use my camera? I ask, employing the ancient art of comic pantomime to reinforce the message. My Syrian police escort nods his head disinterestedly. I have interrupted his conversation with the army-uniformed border guard. From the looks of things, they’re old pals who only get to chat when tourists such as myself stray into these parts. Everyone knows their neighbor down here.

The camera is aimed deliberately, poised to capture the scene from all angles. I must record it as I said I would- capture it so that I remember it exactly and can describe it to you accurately. I am, after all, standing amongst living history.

And so I will chronicle all angles of this anonymous place- except for the border post behind me. My chaperone has made it pretty clear that photographing Syrian military installations isn’t allowed, and I’m not about to find out what the penalty might be.

The enemy encampment and UN and Red Cross installations in between however, are fair game. Still, I try to be discrete as the last thing I want is to be spotted and subsequently hunted by Mossad as a Syrian spy.

The final border Syrian border checkpoint in the Golan- Al Jolan, is a strange place, but curiously, doesn’t feel like the flashpoint of modern history that it is. There isn’t that sense of tension or precariousness I was expecting. There aren’t rows of tanks here, or the thousands of men staring each other down just a few metres away, as there are, apparently on the 39th parallel in divided Korea.

Instead, on the Syrian side at least, a bored 19 year old in fatigues and a Kalashnikov sits on a stool in a shed trying to make his last cigarette last. The WELCOME TO ISRAEL sign, of course is just propaganda- either a taunt or wishful thinking, depending on your point of view. Nobody has crossed this border in at least 40 years, save a few dozen Druze brides whose people, split between the two countries, are prohibited from marrying outside of their community and thus were allowed to exchange Syrian passports for Israeli ones several years back.

The overwhelming emotion here isn’t of fear, tension or (perhaps as part of me hoped) the thrill of standing in the epicentre of a major geopolitical quake zone. Rather, it’s one of sadness. This is sodding ridiculous I find myself muttering under my breath.

We’re not in a war zone- this is the countryside. By all rights, tractors and pickup trucks with farm kids piled in the back should be working their way back and forth along this road right now, with nobody in the next town, let alone anywhere else in the World, taking the slightest bit of notice. Instead, 40 years of deadlock and political posturing give us barbed wire and bored sentries, and if I were to walk 100m further down the road, I’d probably be covering the last 50 in a body bag, courtesy of the Syrian Army and/or the IDF.

This strip of land has had so much invested in it, given so much value, that it’s easy to forget that, at the end of the day, it’s just a tragic waste with very little in it.

For most Israelis, this scrub land is just a buffer zone, although for some this is just the beginning of a larger, all-encompassing ‘Greater Israel’ across the Middle East. It represents security, a check against neighbours with whom it has never come to terms, a water supply, and, at the most mercenary, a bargaining chip for when the time eventually comes- at American urging- to make a deal.

For the Syrians I have spoken to, Al Golan is their nation’s pride, embodying a self confidence so rudely lost in 1967 and never fully recovered. The years since have offered little but economic difficulties, political isolation and further military humiliation by way of consolation.

For decades therefore, regaining the Golan Heights has been the cause célèbre of Syria’s political classes, and held as a precondition of any deal with Israel. Grandiose speeches and even threats are still sometimes delivered too. With the USSR gone though, the days when Syrian tank columns and flocks of fighter jets might threaten to rumble across the border are long past, and however ruefully, every Syrian knows it. Besides, president Al Assad has other priorities- economic development above all. He’s no fool- foreign investors are scared off by too much sabre rattling.

And so the routine continues. The Golan may be an open sore in Syria’s side and a generation of its residents removed by Israeli soldiers may still reminisce of homes and memories lost, carrying their old house keys with them in the hope of one day returning, but nonetheless, the routine will continue:

Some rhetoric but not too much, Israel and the World’s attention diverted from this quiet place to fires in Gaza and the West Bank, and quiet and creeping acceptance of the status quo.

And when the time finally comes to make peace, the Golan, and the people tied to it, will become mere symbols- trophies to be bargained with, prioritized against other demands and concessions, traded and dealt.

The battle for this place, whether played out with tanks or around tables of negotiators, is about lots of things- pride, security, economics and perhaps, if some have their way, even arcane matters of religion and history. The argument over this place is about just about everything- except the land itself, and least of all the people who have fallen through this tarmac crack across it.