Golan Heights

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establishment of schools and the improvement of medical care.

History

In ancient times there were numbers of Jewish settlements in this area. In the first century A.D. it belonged to Herod's son Philip, who founded Caesarea Philippi. At the south end of the area, on the Yarmouk, was Gadara, an important center of Greek culture which was also frequented for its mineral springs.

From 1948 onwards the Israeli frontier with Syria ran along the Jordan. After the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967 a number of Jewish settlements were established. United Nations troops are stationed in a buffer zone along the frontier. At the end of 1981 Israel declared the annexation of the Golan Heights.

Organized coach and taxi trips to the Golan Heights usually take visitors to see conquered Syrian positions. Other reminders of the battles which raged here between 1967 and 1973 are the settlements with their barbed-wire defenses, tanks abandoned by the roadside and the debris of war welded together to make primitive memorials of the fighting.