Dan, Dan, and Syria!

The northern most city in Israel is Dan--once upon a time it was a city at least, now its just ruins and a park. Lebanon is a just down the hill to the west and Syria is just up the hill to the east. The tribe of Dan sure lucked out by getting this land because its by far the greenest and most full of springs.
The second picture is in Dan and shows the mud city gate to the old city of Laish where Abraham would have passed through coming from Ur (Iraq today). It is the oldest know city gate still standing, dating back to 2000 BC, that's over 4000 years old!
As you know, the Golan Heights are in northern Israel and we drove through parts of it. At points we were driving right along the Syrian border, at other points there is a large "disengagement" zone between the two with UN people in the middle. It has some similarities to the DMZ in Korea although not as drastic. The picture of me smiling shows the disengagement zone. The white buildings belong to the UN and everything past that is part of Syria. There is even a large Syrian flag on the other side, kind of like the Koreans have. A ton of the land has mines. So there are signs everywhere telling you to not cross the fence, so naturally I crossed. There is also an old Syrian bunker you can crawl into. It's probably kind of like the squaw peak of the area for the high school couples.