Word: golan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed, and beleaguered, as Pope John Paul II has discovered on his tour of Syria. The pontiff found himself at the center of a familiar Middle Eastern political firestorm Monday, as his Syrian hosts took him to the ruins of Kuneitra, a town bordering the Golan Heights that was destroyed by Israeli forces in 1974 and has been maintained as a ghost town ever since. And while the pope prayed for peace and for the victims of the latest Israeli-Palestinian violence, Israelis expressed outrage at remarks by Syria's President Bashar Assad in welcoming...
...Japanese on the Golan have earned a reputation among their peers as disciplined soldiers and meticulous planners, prevented from responding quickly to unexpected situations because their every move has to be checked with Tokyo-based officials. "As Canadians we just wing a lot of things," says Lieut. Colonel Bruce Harding, who commands the joint Canadian-Japanese logistics battalion. "The Japanese are much more precise and orderly. You don't want to surprise them with anything...
...having a limited mandate when an unprotected Japanese policeman was killed by guerrillas because soldiers were stationed in a secure area miles away. Japan has also sent its soldiers minesweeping in the Persian Gulf, peacekeeping in Mozambique and on humanitarian missions to Rwanda and Honduras. The unit in the Golan is the one long-term operation...
...Planning was just as obsessive for the Golan mission. On the eve of the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur in 1995, Mokady was called to the Japanese embassy in Tel Aviv to address senior Japanese diplomats, a delegation of lawmakers and top military officers. The barrage of questions he faced focused on the safety of the Japanese soldiers. "I managed to convince them that it's not chaos over here," Mokady says of the situation in their sector of the Golan...
...disengagement line along the Golan ridge is as about as stable as a disputed border can be. There are none of the skirmishes and violence that blow up around the separate U.N. force a few kilometers away in southern Lebanon. Though two Austrians were shot dead three years ago - probably by criminals on the Syrian side of the border - the Japanese have managed to send 11 contingents for six months apiece without so much as losing a pair of socks...