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...Saturday, many Syrians will celebrate their Independence Day by driving up into the foothills of Mount Hermon and picnicking amid the apple blossoms in that portion of the Golan Heights that remains under Syrian control. In recent years, the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has used the occasion to call for Israel - which has occupied most of the Golan Heights since the war of 1967 - to return the territory in exchange for an end to the conflict between the two countries, which have officially been at war since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. But the Syrian...
...military sources, reported on Tuesday that Syria rebuffed an Israeli overture to have indirect military communications through the U.N. observer force that monitors the demilitarized buffer zone between the two sides in the Golan, whose purpose is solely to prevent an outbreak of violence. So this year's Independence Day picnickers on Mount Hermon will enjoy their hummus under what appears to be a looming storm cloud...
...Ellis says. Well, as it happened both Hajji Lala and the police chief owned farmland just south of the proposed canal. "But who was I to stand in the way of progress?" Ellis adds, dryly. "I could put hundreds of people to work, pay them 600 Afghans [$3] a day." It was the beginning of a partnership. Ellis wanted to prove he could produce. The project would begin the following week...
...rules of engagement. A soldier is always permitted to use his or her discretion in a matter of self-defense. But the overall impact of the rules has been a hunkering down, a decidedly less aggressive attitude about going after the enemy, from the air or from the ground. "Day by day, we're watching the Taliban put in IEDs, creeping up toward the town," Ellis says. "I'm losing two inches of Senjaray every day." The effect on morale has been brutal. "Maybe half the guys in Dog Company spent their last tour in Iraq, in Ramadi...
...Conversation It was unimaginable that the higher-ups - those in "echelons above reality," as Ellis liked to say - would actually stop the Pir Mohammed project. He figured it would be delayed a day or two and decided to move ahead with his plan. He needed to have some troops in place, in an observation and listening post near the school, on the night before the operation took place. On Sunday, April 4, Ellis joined the 2nd platoon on a patrol to scout locations...