Green Hills and Lebane - a tour near the lebanon border

As we rode further into the hills above nahariya, in the north of Israel, David kept saying at each corner that’s Lebanon! That’s Lebanon! Of course we had no idea whether it was or not, but we knew we were pretty close when we saw a ‘keep out – border’ sign down a little track.

It is spring in Israel, and while in a few months the land will be yellow and sour with want of water,  at the moment, in a hazy warm light, by the hills above the Jezrael valley you can almost mistake the vista for for the rolling hills in England.

But up here in the north it’s as far as you could get from England. We drove up a winding single track road, passing the odd herd of mountain goats.  It reminded me of driving in the north of Scotland, without perhaps the drama of the sweeping slopes and lochs.  Of course it’s a different type of drama here.  We saw a battered brown sign saying ‘Galleria/coffee’ and followed it.  Yet another dirt track road led us to yard filled with a few bits of scrap, a dilapidated fifties car, and a carefully wrought iron work bench looking over the hills.  Inside there was a long room full of tables made of tree trunks. 

The pretty young girl serving explained that they’d all moved there in the 80’s as chalutzim (pioneers) given incentives to build houses with the proviso that they build responsibly to the environment and that the beauty of the forest be preserved.  She described how the ketushas missed them during the last Lebanon war, aiming further.  It felt that all over the world there are the same types of people who run away to little communities like this to be reborn in the wild of nature.  She smiled when she described how they almost got snow this winter.

The view was spectacular.  Drier and more rocky than Italy, rougher, interspersed with patches of multishaded green trees and course grasses.

I felt sad though.  Sad at all the litter for a start when we stopped off to walk later.  But also sad after visiting the arab village, where headscarfed women sat working in their balconies, and berber like dressed men, with black robes and white caps walked the pavements throwing the odd salaam Aleichem to the each other to hear it rebound with common greeting.  I felt sad that I felt so alien, just because this was an arab village and I am a jew.  I felt sad that there is so much bloody love in this land, for this land, that that the passion cancels itself out.  It loses itself in the politics.  I felt sad that there was the drama in the hills doesn't come from the scenery.

In the village we ate at a bar which proudly showed off its best restaurant credentials over the last 4 years. We chomped at fresh baked arab bread folded over a combination of lebane (yoghurt cheese) and zaatar (hissop and other spices).  The taste of these green hills.

We left and looked back over the hills, passing by the stained glass windows of some of the houses, perched on the mountains.  We drove back to the crowded schunot (residential areas) of Naharayi where everywhere, families, arab and jew, sat round tables on the balconies, eating the same cucumber and tomato salad, humus and pitta for the evening meal.