SYRIA LETTER:The town of Quneitra was devastated by Israeli bombs. It has been back in Syrian hands since 1974, but the government has decided not to rebuild it
QUNEITRA in the Golan Heights may have only one restaurant, but the lunchtime mezze – or appetizers – here are as good as anywhere in the Middle East. Houmous, tabbouleh and baba ghanoush – a delicious aubergine-based dip – are all served to be scooped up with fresh pitta bread.
We are the only customers today, our table comprising a pair of Irish tourists, a local guide and our painfully shy bus driver who has to be cajoled to come in from the hot summer sun to join us for the meal. In the circumstances, it is no surprise that the restaurant is otherwise empty. The surprising thing is that there is a restaurant in Quneitra at all.
Walk any direction when you leave and all you’ll find are the ruined remains of this once prosperous market town, which served as Syria’s provincial capital in the Golan. Houses everywhere lie flattened, some with roofs intact as if the walls have suddenly collapsed from exhaustion, others with just the front door frame still standing as a ghostly reminder that the spot in question was at one time an entrance to somebody’s home.
The town, which once had a population of more than 20,000, was destroyed by Israeli forces before they handed it back to Syria as part of a US-brokered agreement in 1974. Quneitra’s residents had fled seven years earlier when Israel seized it, along with the rest of the Golan Heights, in the Six Day War of 1967.
Israel claims much of the damage to Quneitra was caused by Syrian shelling in the intervening period. But a United Nations special committee found that Israeli forces were responsible for the town’s “deliberate and total devastation”. When Syria regained control the expectation was that residents would be able to return and rebuild their former homes. Instead, the Damascus government decided to leave the devastated town untouched in order to show it off to the world as a monument to Israeli aggression.
Foreign dignitaries visiting Damascus are routinely hauled off to Quneitra for a tour of the ruins. It has even hosted a papal visit, Pope John Paul II having stopped by in May 2001. Tourists are also welcomed, making Quneitra one of the more unlikely visitor attractions in the Middle East.
This being Syria, however, there is inevitably some bureaucracy involved, and anyone who is planning to make the 50km (31 mile) journey from Damascus to Quneitra must first acquire a permit from the ministry of the interior. We have been warned that this could involve a two-hour wait at the ministry’s office in Damascus’s northwest suburb, but our application is processed in minutes.
We take a public minibus to Quneitra province, which stops at a terminus a few kilometres short of the destroyed town.
There, after a few minutes of friendly interrogation in his office, the local police chief directs us towards another bus, a battered old carpet-lined but colourful vehicle that looks as if it might have spent its best days in the San Francisco of the 1960s.
As we approach the UN checkpoint at the entrance to Quneitra town, we find ourselves alone with the driver and his assistant, the few other passengers having disembarked along the way. The pair offer to drive us around the ruined town for a small payment. We ask the driver’s assistant if he is a policeman, having been advised that a Syrian intelligence officer will always be on hand to accompany tourists around the site, if only to ensure they don’t step on a landmine.
“No. I am guide. Tourist guide,” he proudly informs us.
And so the bus pulls up at one ruined building after another, while the guide encourages us to step outside and take photographs. “Mosque,” he says solemnly, and we duly disembark to photograph this shell of a building which, its minaret still standing, clearly was once a mosque. In the old Greek Orthodox church, we stand inside a building that has been so thoroughly vandalised, only the walls and roof remain.
Our guide, though, is something less than a mine of information. When we ask a question about the countless bits of broken masonry on the floor, he nods and sombrely replies: “Israel.”
The most shocking site of all is the hospital, its interior riddled with bullet holes and all the fittings removed, but still recognisably a hospital. Lest our guide’s laconic commentary hasn’t done the trick, a sign at the front of the building makes sure we know who to blame: “Golan Hospital,” it states. “It was destroyed and changed into a firing target and a training place by Zionists.”
Our tour, which concludes with lunch at Quneitra’s wonderful surprise of a restaurant, is conducted under the watchful eye of Israeli military personnel, whose post we can see on a hilltop overlooking the town.
Indeed, we have received “Welcome to Israel” texts on our mobile phones. But of course we have not been to Israel. We have been to Quneitra, a poignant and distinctly peculiar legacy of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
