| Hind Kabawat | Proud Syrian | Syria |
Re: ‘Syria's Occupied Golan Heights’
To my dear Israeli friend:
Back in February 2002, in Tigne, France, we ended up in the same group together taking ski lessons. That was when our friendship began. We had all been introduced by our first names, and then off we went with our instructor and five others to ski in the beautiful Alps.
We hit it off from the first moment. We laughed, we failed, we encouraged each other, and finally we sat in a little restaurant somewhere overlooking the lovely Alps and drank hot chocolate, having our lunch. We started chatting and you introduced yourself: “I am Keren from Israel.” I replied, “I am Hind from Syria.” We looked each other curiously as this was the first time I had met an Israeli, and it was also your first time meeting a Syrian. But we were surprised and happy to find that we have nearly the same accent when we speak a foreign language, we have the same color eyes. We were almost cousins, yes, we were enemies back home, but definitely it was too late now we had already become friends.
I remember that we sat together and discussed politics every evening après ski, and we discussed together a peace plan. We were both suffering and in pain from the wars in our region, we were from the same generation, we vaguely remember the 1967 war, but we do remember the tragedy and suffering our people have to go through in the time of war. We remembered as adolescents the 1973 war, and the conflicts.
Then we got to talking about a plan for peace between our two countries, and how you could come and visit me in Damascus and we would go together and ski in the Golan, and I go to visit you with my family to see the holy sites of Jerusalem. We talked about real peace, with economic exchange, tourism and trade. We both want recognition, we both want stability and we both want security.
Days, month passed, we kept in touch, we wrote each other regularly, we both got hurt when Israel started building “The Wall”, we both felt pain when civilians on both sides were dying, we both felt pain during the Lebanese war, the missiles killing Israelis and Israel’s destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon, not to mention cluster bombs. But your father’s letter to me at the end of last summer was so beautiful – full of hope to all our people, both Arabs and Israelis. He made me cry.
Well, my friend, the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 War is coming, almost our age, and we do need lastly to listen to our hearts and put pressure on our governments to bring to an end to war once and for all. We need to mount efforts together to make peace happen: security, recognition and stability for you, and the full Golan returned to Syria.
And in a beautiful ski lodge in the Golan Heights, après ski we can have the hot chocolate, or perhaps homos in beautiful old Damascus and in gorgeous old Jerusalem.
My love to you and to your family.
(16 votes, average: 3.56 out of 5)
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