Word: kuneitra
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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...
From Mount Hermon, the border road winds down the Golan Heights. Until 1967, Syrian troops used the heights as an artillery platform against kibbutzim in the northern Galilee valley below. Now the heights are largely deserted. Kuneitra, which once had a population of 20,000. has only 300 today, most of them members of an Israeli kibbutz that operates a coffee shop selling apple strudel, beverages, and busts of Golda Meir. Moshe Dayan and David Ben-Gurion. Smaller Syrian villages are being bulldozed. "They had become a health hazard," explains an Israeli officer. "They provided refuge for stray dogs, cats...
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