 I'm currently driving northbound through Israel. This time I'm going somewhere I've wanted to go for literally years. It's called Ghadjar. It is a border town that if you look at the map, its location is fascinating. It's technically half the town is over the international border between Israel and Lebanon. After three long hours of travel from Jerusalem, we have made it to the village of Ghadjar. This is really exciting because it used to be not so long ago. The last time we tried to come here about a year ago, there is an IDF checkpoint, an Israeli army checkpoint at the entrance to the village. It's still there, but now that Israel has opened access to civilians, you can get further. Now, what's also interesting is that just a little bit past that IDF checkpoint and pretty much where I'm standing, all the stuff you can see in the background here. So for those interested in Israeli borders and yes, border spotting is the thing. Generally, you can get right up to borders between Israel and its neighboring countries for reasons of security. Typically, those areas that do really, really about the border are called closed military zones and only the IDF can go in them. So this is typically what it looks like. The fences all have these numbers on them, barbed wire, stuff that tells you you're approaching a border. So where I am recording this video from is just at the entrance to the village. The blue line, I'm going to pinpoint exactly at what point we cross the blue line. It's about probably 50 meters up that way. This road actually crosses the blue line and the blue line is effectively Israel's de facto border with Lebanon. The countries are technically at war, so it's not a border that's been agreed upon, but that serves as the international border. So where we are at the moment is the entrance to Rajar. People are coming in and out of the village. It's an al-await village. We're going to check out a little bit of stuff that is in on the Israeli side. We're going to check a little bit of stuff that technically is in Lebanon. One more thing I will say, there's signage up from the Israeli army, from the IDF asking for visitors to treat the local residents with respect. So I'm trying my best despite holding a microphone, not to make too much of a spectacle of this, but if we can get anyone to talk about their life in the village, that will be amazing as well. So where I am currently standing at this point in Rajar and this road, according to Google Maps, I'm standing almost exactly on the blue line. The side of the village this way was the Clalit Health Clinic. One of the health funds is located on the Israeli side. And if I swing around this way and I start walking backwards for about 10 meters, trying not to get in the way of traffic, I'm now crossing into Lebanon and on the Lebanese side, the blue line. As you can see on Google Maps, I'm now over the blue line and in Lebanon. So clearly the blue line itself, the de facto border is not demarcated in Rajar, but you can pass between the two sides freely. And that's what makes this, for border spotters, one of the most interesting villages in the world. So I'm recording this video on the lookout point in Rajar. And what you can see behind me, all those houses in the distance over here and also over in this direction, located across a riverbed, only probably about 100 meters away, those houses are in Lebanon. Now I was wondering from my limited abilities to research this place on Google Maps, how Israel could have taken control over the entirety of this village while half of it being a Lebanese territory. The answer is that there is a sort of, I guess, de facto border fence running around this village, which is physically cutting it off from the rest of South Lebanon, which otherwise would just be somewhere you could walk into from any point here. And it's crazy to think about. The history of Rajar is fascinating, like many places in this part of the world. It's changed hands many times over the course of history. Most interestingly, perhaps since 1967, in 1967, Israel conquered the Golan Heights or according to lots of international community members occupied the Golan Heights. And when that happened, the village of Rajar was for two months effectively in No Man's Land. It used to be part of Syria, now integrated into Israel. The villagers petitioned the Israeli governor of the Golan, the newly appointed Israeli governor, in order to be integrated into Israel. Even those Alawites, they feel their identity is more towards Syria. Now, of course, given the blue line demarcation, the fact that this village was halfway over the line was problematic and has been the subject of a lot of disputes since. Also worth pointing out, you can see behind me as well in the background, a couple of UN stations and the UN blue line, which is the de facto international border between Israel and Lebanon, is actually marked out with these kind of little blue cylinders. And the exact course of the blue line itself is a matter of dispute. There's a UN mission, UNIFIL, the United Nations, Interim Force, Lebanon. A major part of their mission is coordinating the exact route of the border between the Lebanese armed forces, the LAF, and the Israeli army, the IDF. Video blog from a location on the road here in Israel. I'm currently in Matullah, which is the northernmost town in Israel. And where I'm recording this blog is located exactly 479 meters from Israel's international border with Lebanon. I've made a few videos before on this channel about my sort of fascination with international borders. Weird hobby, I'll admit, trace it back to visiting Nicosia as a child. But in the course of exploring interesting places along Israel's international borders, I chanced upon the town of Matullah and discovered this is actually more going on here than you might think. It's a town of only about 1,000 citizens, but it's very, very much has a really, really interesting history as a border town, especially in Israel's early development. Now, the border is located exactly, as I mentioned, 479 meters in this direction. And the lights you can see in the distance there are actually off in Lebanon. Tomorrow, I'm going to check out, there's a couple of bars we're currently drinking in a bar called Ayuni, which means my eye in Arabic. They have a really, really good selection of Lashuf. So you wouldn't think that like literally 500 meters between Israel and Lebanon, there's a bar with Lashuf, but this is what there is. There's another bar called Hakura. And there's a couple of nice hostels and accommodation options in the town as well. So tonight, we're checking out some of the Matullah nightlife. And tomorrow, we're going to see what else this interesting village ski resource in the Golan has to offer. Bringing you another video from another international border in Israel. If you didn't think borders were interesting before, perhaps subscribing to me on YouTube, I hope I'm slowly changing your mind. Borders are the fault lines between countries, the tectonic plates. And in this part of the world in Israel, they're not just separating between countries, they're separating between completely different ideologies. And in this case, the border here I'm in front of, which is the Israel-Lebanon border, or technically the blue line I'll get into that, is the dividing line between two countries, which are officially at a state of war. So where I am today, specifically according to Google Maps, there is 87 meters between where I'm standing and Lebanon. That village you can see behind me in the distance is the village of Qvar Kila, which is immediately a butting Matula. And we just visited a really interesting memorial here. It's called the Andernet Gederhatov. Gederhatov in Hebrew means the good fence. And basically this is a memorial to Maronite Christian fighters who were fighting effectively alongside or on behalf of the IDF between 1982 and 2000 during Israel's protracted operation to ensure a security buffer in southern Lebanon. Gederhatov, as I said in Hebrew, technically just means good fence, but it's a nickname for the official border crossing was called the Fatima Gate. And this was basically where the Fatima Gate was. As I mentioned, this is about 80 meters before the border and those houses, there's one here about 50 meters away, you can see a mosque. These are all in Qvar Kila. Qvar Kila, just to emphasize how close all this stuff is, is a Hezbollah stronghold with the Hezbollah army base, at least 20 arms depots. And when the IDF uncovered a couple of years ago attempts by Hezbollah to dig under the border in order to plan their very, very elaborate operation to have a land invasion into these border towns in Israel, one of the tunnels was found entering Israel, very, very close to where I'm standing. So the border was called Fatima Gate because Israel from 1977 until 2000 had a de facto policy, a soft policy of allowing Marini Christians to come into Israel for various good things. That's why it was called the good fence to kind of, I guess, conjure up the idea of goodwill. A 1.1 third of the patients in the nearest hospital here in the Ophthalmology Department were Lebanese people. They used to be able to come through the border freely in order to work in Israel, in order to access medical treatment in Israel and then return back into Lebanon. And also I mentioned the border briefly. I'm going to just mention the technicalities. People get very fussy about this word. For me, a border is a dividing line between two countries, but technically an international border, to be worthy of the term, has to sort of be agreed between the two countries on the other side of the border. So what you have between Israel and Lebanon is more like a demarcation line based on where Israel withdrew to following its withdrawal out of Lebanon. And now an international organization, Unifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, are responsible for sort of enforcing the separation along this, what's called the blue line, and is literally marked out by blue cylinders. As I mentioned in my last video at nighttime, his Bilal are now using their latest technique, is using little laser pointers to attempt to blind drivers on the Israeli side of the border, put lasers into their house, and potentially cause it. It sounds like a trivial thing, but actually has the potential to cause lifelong eyesight damage, including potentially all the way up to blindness. So this is Kfar Kila. On the other side here is the beautiful town of Matula, which as I mentioned is the northernmost community in Israel, surrounded on all sides by Lebanon. And over there in the backdrop again is the fantastic, beautiful view, which I'll include a few seconds of in this video, of the Hormone covered in snow. Israel is only a ski resort and also shared with Syria. A Hageda Hatov was sort of the nickname for it. It was officially called Shafatima. It was an exception to the otherwise rule that there really is no border crossings, regular border crossings between Israel and Lebanon. And in the year 2000 when Israel concluded, it's withdrawal from south Lebanon and unified the United Nations, Interim Force in Lebanon, which whose mandate is to create a buffer in this part of Lebanon, Israel, whereby the IDF doesn't come north of the blue line, Hisbalah doesn't operate to the south of the blue line, although their success in that mandate really, really should be drawn into question after a number of tunnels being operated by Hisbalah were discovered, literally where they're supposed to be. But this is exactly where we are and how close the two countries are at this point. And as I mentioned, although it's a beautiful country site here, the Hormone, the lovely village of Matula, this is very much a border with that constant activity going on. Bringing you another video of intrigue for us as strange folk, the border spotting enthusiast. In my defense, I actually came to this place not to spot a border, but it's quite hard to go very far in this part of Israel without encountering something related to borders or the like. What you're looking at behind me here is actually Israel's border with Syria. Now, to be a bit more technical about it, it's actually the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, which is comprised of a little small patch of land located between Undof Line Alpha and Undof Line Bravo. Undof is the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, and it's one of the UN missions like UNIFIL, UNSO, UNSCO, it does get a bit confusing, who have a presence on the ground here in Israel. And just across the border, so you have the DMZ, and then the border is, I'm just going to step out of the frame for a second, is Al-Qunaitra, which is in Syria, and has been a site of shelling between Syrian rebels and pro-government forces. And we're so close at this point that you can hear occasionally explosions across the border. A few words about where I am located, this rooftop. So it's labeled on Google Maps as Syrian Army Headquarters or the Syrian Headquarters in Hebrew Habinyan Hamoudi'in Hasuri, which means that the build is slightly different, meaning the building of Syrian intelligence. This was built in 1962 by a Russian architect, and it was built very well. The reason that we know it's built very well is firstly, I mean it's still standing, so there's that. But it was actually bombed repetitively by Israel, and it has stood nonetheless. But you can actually go inside, it's an abandoned building, the corridors at the moment are kind of full of water and icicles, but you can actually see the stairways are sort of bombed out, metal poking out of them, that kind of stuff. So you can see a little bit about its history. This building actually played a very important role during the Six-Day War, because it was a command post for the Syrian Army. There are a couple of theories that this was actually firstly constructed as a hospital, but from what I understand from talking to a tour guide downstairs and from reading on the internet, the consensus is that this was always built as a command post, effectively a forward command center for the Syrian Army in the Golan. Now during the Six-Day War, Israel bombed this because it was a site of strategic importance to the Syrians, and it bombed it a couple of times. Ultimately the building was abandoned, and when Israel came here, they planted the Israeli flag on the rooftop I'm standing on, and found a treasure trove of documents that proved a huge key to Israeli intelligence. During firstly the course of the Six-Day War, and afterwards as well the Israeli military intelligence, which is known as AMAN, gained a lot of information from this post. A couple more details about it that I think are interesting. It's on the Eli Cohen trail, Eli Cohen, of course being the legendary Israeli spy who was ultimately killed, hung in Damascus, and about whom an excellent Netflix series has been produced, and he was in this building. Now the question is why was Eli Cohen Mossad operative in a Syrian military command post? So the answer to that apparently has to do with the fact that he needed a permit from the Syrian Army in order to access the Golan. Obviously strategic now as it was then, and in order for Eli Cohen to look around this area under his cover, he needed to get a permit, and the fact that he was able to literally do this, walk into a military headquarters is regarded as testimony to firstly how on the kind of terms he must have been with the Syrian Army, how effective he was as an intelligence operative, and basically how much he did in service of Israel and played a huge role undoubtedly both in the Six-Day War and intelligence that has informed Israeli operations for all the time since then. So this is the Syrian Army headquarters. Just if you are, there are families visiting here, but it's a little bit staircase without railings, that sort of thing. So if you are going to come here, just do be careful a little, some hazards definitely, and come up to the roof. If you're interested in borders and look towards this side, the side where you have all the wind turbines on, and open up Google Maps and you can see where you're facing, and this is, as I mentioned, we're looking into Syria. For veteran border spotters, one clue that this is a border is those yellow fences are typically are where closed military zones are right next to the border. And if you can zoom in on my, I'll zoom in on my camera, but you can't really see it with the naked eye. There is the border fence there and some warnings as well, and a couple of eyed posts on the other side. The Syrian Army Headquarters is located two kilometers to the west of Kuneitra in Syria, but if you want to visit this, you have to come from the Israeli side, so it's close to Har Bental, Mount Bental. We're here now in the Nahal Ayun National Park. It's a national park here in Matula, along the eastern edge, one trail, and there are three different waterfalls to see, but we're only going to get time to see one of them this morning, but marked by the trail markers. So here we are. So this is the conclusion of my three-day trip in Matula, the northernmost town in Israel, and I'm in Nahal Ayun National Park, which is a beautiful national park on the east of the village. There's four different waterfalls to see. The waterfall you're seeing behind me is the Ayun waterfall, and there's three others that are bigger, and there's trails continuing for a couple of kilometers, and where we are geographically is just on the eastern edge of the village, hugging the border with Lebanon, walking around there. So this has been a really interesting trip. This is one of the highlights for nature lovers, hiking lovers of this part of the country. Of course, it's also an incredible place, although Matula is based in the Galil, the Galilee region of Israel, to explore the Golan, which is not so far across the country. It's a terrific base, and yesterday we saw a Syrian abandoned Syrian command post, fascinating place to see, and there's lots, lots more to do in the area. There's also a main street in Matula with a fun bar and pizza venue called Ayuni. There's a little bank, there's a little post office. It's truly one of my favorite places in Israel. It's a small town of only about 2,000 people, but there's a few different hotels, accommodations, and as I said, it's a really great base for doing some exploration of the beautiful north of Israel. Thanks for watching the video, and if you want to get more from me, do subscribe to the YouTube channel.