An Undisclosed Location on the Israeli-Lebanese Border

We wound our way further north, through stunning countryside, past Mount Meron, and up to the very border with Lebanon. We stopped at an Army outpost high upon a hill. It was surrounded by barbed wire, ringed with concrete and dirt, and the gate was securely (?) locked by a lock and chain slightly bigger than a bicycle lock. (Humorously, a patrol vehicle came back but was locked out, so they had to wait for someone to come down from the outpost with a key).

We went up, just steps from the Lebanese border and received a briefing from the 21 year old Lieutenant who is in charge of some tanks and about a dozen men, all of whom looked young enough to look forward to shaving some day. In Israel, people grow up fast.

There were no Hizbollah or UN troops in sight, but there was a great deal of action at the outpost. Some soldiers were working on the tanks (they fired them up as part of their maintenance/for us), while a couple of patrol vehicles – Humvees with mounted machine guns and others – came through on their way checking the line. Poor Chip Saltsman was sick and had already gotten a ride to the Kibbutz where we stayed Thursday night, but the other GOP consultants had huge grins on our faces – we looked like it was Christmas morning and we were 8 years old!

Understandably, we were allowed to take pictures of the tanks/soldiers, but we were asked not to post them on the Internet/Facebook, etc. I’m going to respect that order for two reasons:

1. It makes sense.
2. No need to have the Mossad pay a visit to me in Virginia.

I asked the Lieutenant how many soldiers were stationed at the base. He didn’t want to answer the question, so I hurriedly withdrew it, to laughter all around. The briefing and the tanks took place on the other side of the top of the hill, because they don’t want anything visible to Hizbollah (which means “the party of God,” although as far as I can tell, they have little to do with a party and less to do with God).

It did look like something out of a CNN (or better yet, Fox News) segment, as the soldiers climbed around on the tanks with the sun behind them and the stunningly beautiful mountains in the background. I was expecting dirt and desert, but instead the land is beautiful.

On the walk back out of the outpost, I talked with one of the security guys about his service (parachutist), and his time in the reserve (medic). I asked about the UN troops, which he noted with anger were worthless.

Nearly everyone in Israel enters the military for 2-3 years, and then serves in the reserves till age 45 (and possibly a few beyond). This has multiple impacts – it provides the country with youthful leadership, provides the soldiers with friendships from different backgrounds (Israel is a melting pot), and, of course, provides a well trained reserve force that can be quickly mobilized.

After that, we headed for a short visit to a kibbutz very close to the Lebanese border, where the original plan was for us to plant kiwi trees, but we were running behind, so we got a short talk and some of us posed with the remnants of a rocket that was fired during the 2nd Lebanese War.

(By the way, we are now driving South on Friday mortning from the Golan Heights, from where we saw Syria. Now, we are looking across the Jordan Valley – which is part of the Syrian-African rift – into Jordan. At some point we were just one hundred yards or so from Jordan.)