At 9,232 feet above sea level, I looked down on Syria, Lebanon, and Israel all at the same time.
But when I was looking down on Tuesday, I was looking down from the Syrian peak of Mount Hermon, which is far above the 6,690-foot peak of the Israeli Hermon that I have been on a few times.
Part of what was astounding about the experience was being in Syria at all and my first helicopter ride.I was in Syria once before at Tel Kudne in December, so this should not have been as shocking as that visit, which I had no idea was even theoretically possible until I was suddenly invited by the IDF less than half a day before the visit took place.
There were three other reasons that the visit blew me away.
First was the breathtaking view of the snowy Hermon range and the surrounding areas.Second was the strategic location.Tel Kudne was impressive because we were in Syria and at a Syrian military base with trenches, weaponry, and all kinds of items that you would expect an enemy base to have – but which you would never get to see up close. But the view was limited to 5-10 kilometers into Israel and Syria.From the Syrian Hermon, you can see dozens of kilometers in all directions – some days even to Damascus, around 35 kilometers away – and you can view critical junctures where Iran has been smuggling weapons to Hezbollah through Syria for years.True, Israeli aircraft have watched and attacked many of these areas in recent years.But now Israel has a whole new close and direct physical way to follow these developments without having to maneuver aircraft or drones, or to get lucky at catching smugglers at the right patrol time, and without having to make a decision about whether to expend airtime in Syria as opposed to one of Israel’s many other fronts.IDF Division 210 is just there. It can watch out for smuggling attempts all of the time, without having to move or do anything dramatic.Third was the fact that IDF Division 210 is not only there, but that they decided to bring myself and other journalists there.
A geopolitical decision
This decision was no simple move for a bit of media attention, but a full-on geopolitical decision.With this visit, the Israeli government is telling the world, even more clearly than its top officials have said in recent statements, that it is staying on the Syrian Hermon and in its Syria buffer zone for the foreseeable future – probably for years.However, every Israeli official makes it clear that the Jewish state has no territorial ambitions for Syria and Israeli forces are limited to nine strategic border positions, trying to disrupt the local Syrian population as little as possible.When I visited Tel Kudne in December, officials were talking about being in a Syria buffer zone for a period of months.Everything was new, no one knew what the new Syrian regime would do next or how the world would react, and an IDF military presence in Syria was not seen as merely temporary, but temporary with a real not too distant end date.The difference in how I arrived at Tel Kudne and the Syrian Hermon tells a lot of this story.For Tel Kudne, I drove myself to Alonei Habashan on the Israeli side of the border. From there, it took us around five minutes to cross into southern Syria. It would take us another 40 minutes or so to get to the top of Tel Kudne in relatively standard army transport vehicles, but that was just to make the approach easier and to be less disruptive to the local Syrians.When the IDF took over Tel Kudne, if the military needed to get more forces there speedily in the future, it could be done with essentially lightning speed.In contrast, to get to the Syrian Hermon, I drove to an Israeli air force base, where we boarded a large helicopter that flew us to a landing point within the Syrian Hermon range.From there, we traveled 14 kilometers for around an hour in large red snowmobiles, ascending around 600 additional meters through very bumpy and snowy twists and turns in order to arrive at the peak.One could get from Israel to Tel Kudne and back in about 30 minutes using fairly standard land vehicles. To get to the Syrian Hermon peak and back requires several hours and a mix of expensive and more risky air force travel combined with specially outfitted snowmobiles.To spend this amount of time and expend this level of resources with civilian-journalists in Syrian territory, the government had to be sure that it is staying for a while and feels secure there.However, even since December, the region and world has radically changed again.
Israel's presence in Syria
Whether it is because the new Syrian regime is weaker and more distracted than originally expected or because it has less Western support than originally presumed, or whether it is because of the profound open-ended support that US President Donald Trump is giving to Israeli operations in Syria – Israel will be in Syria for years to come.The longer Israel stays there, the more some of the negative trade-offs of being there may grow. In the meantime, the Post was able to see up close how valuable the area could be strategically, up until the point that Israel and relevant world powers decide that the new Syrian regime will not threaten the Jewish state and will restrain its more violent jihadist elements from doing so.