What is it like to occupy the Golan Heights in Israel?

The Golan Heights is both familiar and unfamiliar to our people. I am familiar with this place name because I have often seen it in international news for many years; Stranger, because here is definitely a very small number of people in China.

This highland is an area of 1,8 square kilometers in the southwest of Syria and the east of the Jordan Valley. The highland belongs to Syria, and the capital Damascus is only 6 kilometers away. Haifa, an important science and technology city in Israel, is 8 kilometers away from here and has an important strategic position. The present pattern of highland was formed after the fourth Middle East War in 1973, and the United Nations set up buffer zones and observation posts here. The above picture shows today's Golan Heights, where the United Nations military observation post is located.

In the picture, the author stands beside the trench in the Golan Heights. During the Fourth Middle East War in 1973, this place was the graveyard of more than 1,5 tanks. More than 4, soldiers of both Syria and Israel were killed here! Today, most of the cruel battlefields in the past have become the ploughing fields of Kibbutz collective farm in Israel (see the right back of the picture)

The Golan Heights is no stranger to us boys born after 5. In 7' s, the boys' metropolis read carefully the war news in the international news in the newspaper: one was the Middle East war between Arab and Israel, and the other was the military confrontation between the United States and Vietnam.

On the afternoon of October 6th, 1973, during the Fourth Middle East War, after 55 minutes of fire preparation of 6 artillery pieces, the first infantry division and the first armored division of the Syrian army were added. Assad and the National Guard? (divisional units) attack at the same time; The 82nd Assault Battalion of the Syrian Army successfully captured the Israeli post at Mount Hermon by helicopter, but it was not until October 22nd that the Israeli army recaptured the post at Mount Hermon.

On the same day, Israel and Jordan accepted the United Nations truce resolution, and Syria accepted the truce on the 23rd. In this campaign, the Syrian army lost 1,15 tanks, 3,5 people were killed and 35 people were captured. Israeli losses: 25 tanks, 772 dead, 2,453 wounded and 65 captured.

The above picture was captured by the author when he saw an Israeli veteran posing with Israeli soldiers in a coffee shop in the Golan Heights. According to relevant agreements, Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights can only carry light weapons.

Because tanks are mentioned above, let's talk about Merkava tanks, which are well-known and unique in Israeli military equipment: front engine, dish turret, overweight (6 tons) due to emphasis on protection, and multi-person infantry teams can be carried in the car body.

some people call it: tank+infantry fighting vehicle. Now Mekava has developed three models, but there is little difference in appearance, which is nothing more than installing protective armor, updating sight or improving propulsion system. The earliest type 1 rifled gun has a caliber of 15 mm, and it is loaded with a magazine, with 3 rounds each time, which can be fired continuously! Type 2 was changed to a 12 mm caliber gun, and a 6 mortar was stuffed! In addition, there are variant cars that are 155 mm caliber guns, which are used as self-propelled guns.

Over the years, domestic publishing houses have published many memoirs and monographs on the Arab-Israeli dispute and the Middle East war, such as this 7-year-old book cover of the People's Liberation Army (which was written by Egypt based on its battlefield experience when it entered the war). It is very kind to see it on the Internet, because I have been lying quietly in the depths of the author's bookshelf for many years, and now I am too lazy to turn it over? Anyone who has read this book will think that it is more reliable than Liu Yazhou's best-selling book War Directed by the Devil.

after more than 4 years from these wars, the author felt quite complicated when he set foot on this battlefield that he was familiar with in books or newspapers? In short, seeing is believing.

during the 196s and 197s, a large number of battlefield documentaries were shown in domestic cinemas. Apart from the Middle East War, there were several black-and-white battlefield documentaries in Vietnam. The most impressive one was The Immortal Soul of an Iron Wall, which truly recorded the US military's actions against Vietnam. Yongling, at the junction of the north and south waist, carried out repeated large-scale bombing to stop the infiltration of North Vietnam to the south, and a large number of scenes of the US military in this documentary were edited from documentaries shot by Americans.

this military documentary is shocking because it is true! Unfortunately, there is no video resource of this film on the Internet now, so I hope that I can have a chance to visit Yongling in Vietnam in the future.