 Hello, welcome back to Daniel Rossell's very random YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell bringing you another random video. Although I think the random, the randomness is decreasing. We're, we're, we're on the, this channel is on the up. We're focusing on Israel, Jerusalem themes around that and borders. I hope fit into that general picture, at least for those interested in the geopolitics of this part of the world. So I'm currently about halfway through my, my work day here and I decided I need a break because any last residual sparks of productivity or they're going to take another hour to blossom or so. So I thought I would talk in the meantime while I'm waiting for my brain to sort of kick back into gear about the borders of Israel and where you can, if you're interested in border spotting, where you can go to see the borders. And I'll talk about, you know, what that's like and if it's a good idea. And although we'll get into all that stuff. I was encouraged last night because when you have obscure hobbies like visiting international borders, it's always nice when you find other weirdos out there who share your interests. So I'm in a, I'm a member of a Facebook group for border lovers. And no, I did not start that. No, I did not start this Facebook group. And yes, it actually exists. There's also a subreddit for pictures of borders. And if you, anyone who's watched any of my previous videos about visiting locations along Israel's borders, I did Syrian government house HQ last week, which was quite interesting. I did Khvarkila and Matula in Lebanon. I did Kvish-Eser in the summer, which is the road along Israel's Egypt border. I did places along the Gaza border. If you thought I was a border lover or a little bit obsessed with borders, the guys in this group are next, absolutely next level. There are guys going into rainforests or sorry, well, forests, this is Europe here, to find obscure markers from the Austrian, Hungarian border, people really going, traveling around the world, exploring borders and border lands. And I discovered through this book last night that for us border enthusiasts, this book came out, I think it was last summer, publication date, January 2023, I stand corrected. It's, this is actually kind of brand new. It's called the edge of the plane, how borders make and break our world. And as you can see, I bought the Kindle edition last night and I just started it by a guy called James Crawford. And so far, really, really good. He's a Scottish guy and something he mentions at the start of the book is that, you know, the concept of hard borders will get to Israel border spotting shortly, but just a little bit of intro first, the something he mentions is that the concept of hard borders is actually quite a new thing in the world. At the conclusion of the Cold War, there were not that many hard borders. By hard borders, I mean borders that are physically demarcated, not just the policy, but concrete barriers, steel fences, barbed wire, anti-tank for whatever in your mind, hard border entails. That was actually, there was only about 23 of those at the end of the Cold War. Now there's like 74 in the world. So as we go in, as we get through, as we continue into the 21st century, we're actually seeing a rise of populism, a rise of nationalism and more hard borders being put down in various places of the world. Of course, we have famous demagogues like Donald Trump talking about the need to build a huge wall with Mexico. So this concept of hard borders has kind of become associated with very much what's the politics of the day, the zeitgeist of the day, you know, even with Britain perhaps leaving the European Union. Our world is becoming both more united and more divided. And what divides between countries these days is borders. Great book so far. And actually the intro really speaks to me about why I find borders fascinating because it just talks about how arbitrary borders are. These days, borders can be plotted with precision. And it's important to remember that stuff like GIS and advanced mapping technology that we can today say very easily, this tree is a Lebanon. This tree is an Israel. The border is between the two because we can define geo coordinates along the border. That wasn't actually always the case. People used to countries used to kind of describe borders like, well, it's kind of the river and the forest. And there were sometimes room for ambiguity. So the concept of modern, very exact, hard borders. And I think the borders we have here in Israel are kind of emblematic, is a relatively new phenomenon in the world or a growing phenomenon. Now, talking about borders and Israel, how many borders there are. So starting north and we'll work our way around the country. And I'll talk about where you can go to check out if you are so interested the borders. The first one is the border with Lebanon. And the border with Lebanon is a little bit complicated because Israel and Lebanon are at a state of war officially. Lebanon does not recognize Israel, but Lebanon also recently concluded a maritime border agreement with Israel, which mediated through the US, which kind of gave a little bit of recognition. So ironically, there is an agreed maritime border. The land border is currently the blue line for all intents and purposes. And the blue line was not intended as an international border. Generally for international borders in normal, happy situations. Countries A and B agree that this is the border. It's negotiated, but agreed. In Israel's case, you have a UN withdrawal line from 2000 based on Israel's troop movements at a certain day. And that is the blue line. And the blue line is marked out with blue barrels by the UN. And Israel builds its border fence a little bit before typically the blue line. And that's something the IDF yesterday shared a graphic about a infiltrant from Syria who crossed into Israel. And if you look at the infographic, you'll notice that the infiltrator was actually apprehended past the border fence. And that is actually quite normal. Israel generally builds its border fence. What some people call the technical fence in Hebrew. It's called Geder ha-ma-arechet, which means the system fence. And it's called that because it has electronic systems built into it. It's a smart fence. But generally, Israel actually builds its border within its territory deliberately so that it can have surveillance a little bit past and someone who's already within 10 meters of the fence, let's say. They've already violated Israel's sovereignty. They're they're assumed to be a hostile entity. Whereas if you built the border exactly on the fence, you wouldn't have that tiny little buffer. So generally, Israel's border fence, if you look at satellite imagery or a map, you'll notice when you're really near the border is that the border fence isn't on the border. There's often a fence before the border fence demarcating a closed military zone. So you've got a lookalike fence that's not on the border. You've got the border fence that's often not on the border and often the actual border. And we're talking about a difference of like 10 meters here. But often the actual border is unmarked and the border is secured by the fence really. People saying, well, if you're touching the fence, the Israeli fence, if you're climbing over the fence, you're already gone too far and we're going to apprehend you or whatever the case may be. Tell you to go back to the country. So the Lebanese border, the blue line is basically an armistice line. I'm just going to take some water here. Then working, but it's a it's an irregular border because the countries are at a state of war. Working eastwards, we're going to get to Syria. Now, Israel's border with Syria is an interesting one because it's not actually really a border with a country. It's a border with an on-dof DMZ. The United Nations Distant Game and Child Observation Force have created a buffer zone between Israel and Syria, between what the international community would consider the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, what Israel would consider to be the Israeli annexed Golan Heights and Syria proper. And there's supposed to be no military activity in the DMZ. But the DMZ is already in Syria. There's Alpha Line and Bravo Line. Next, we have the border with Jordan, which is as far as I'm aware. I'm not actually sure if the Jordanian or Egyptian borders are longer by by kilometers. The Jordanian border is interesting. It's for some of its course, the Jordanian River. For the rest of its course, it's a desert, long desert border. And the Jordanian border, if you're to ask me, what are the most volatile borders in Israel? Definitely Lebanon won his Bala trying to tunnel across it, planning an invasion across it, IDF preparing for that very, very, very volatile border. Syria potentially volatile. Syrian rebels on the other side. Syrian Syria on the other side, but less so probably. Jordan, these days, relatively there's a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt. So relatively stable. So that was actually the last border to be fully fenced in by Israel. There was a time where it was either parts of the Jordanian border weren't fenced and parts were barely fenced, like, you know, little picket fence you could walk over. The Egyptian border is most associated with drug smuggling and human trafficking. And that's now a fully hard border. It's all the borders now are fenced hard. To an extent, the Egyptian border is a big, tall steel fence. A little bit taller, I think, than the Jordanian border fence to prevent, firstly, the infiltration of ISIS and ISIS affiliates from the Sinai into Israel. Secondly, to prevent drug smuggling. Thirdly, to prevent human trafficking. So those are the borders. And then we have the de facto borders with the palace. So those are four international borders. Then we have the de facto borders with the Palestinian authority, the Gaza Strip and areas A and B of the West Bank. Israel, the Gaza Strip is enclosed by a border fence. And that's very, very hard. There is no movement of regular people really between Israel and Gaza. But diplomats and UN workers can come and go. And some humanitarian cases go. But you definitely cannot just go up to a border crossing with Gaza, like the Eris crossing and walk in, even as an international. No Israeli citizenship. You need to be invited by Hamas, basically. It's very complicated. I have not been to Gaza. Probably never will go to Gaza, but I have known UN people and diplomats who go to Gaza somewhat similarly and know sort of a little bit about the bureaucracy firsthand from them. Or I guess that makes it secondhand. And then we have the Israel's controversial West Bank separation barrier, which generally follows the course of the 1967 Armistice Agreement, the Green Line, but doesn't always follow it. And that serves as a sort of de facto border fence. So let's go now into Google Maps. And I'm just going to give now a whistle stop tour of all these places we've been talking about, starting with Lebanon. So this is the north of Israel here. And this is the northernmost point of Israel called Rosh Anikra. It's a actually kind of a sea reserve. It's quite pretty. I'm going to make myself a little bit bigger. And there actually is a border crossing here because on the Lebanese side, you have Nakoura and you have here. You'll see on the map, Unifil HQ, Nakoura. So Unifil, the United Nations, Interim Force and Lebanon actually has a base just across the border from Israel. This is a blue line. And there is a border crossing here for diplomats, UN staffers, clergy. Let's just call them accepted people. And recently, when Israel negotiated the border with the maritime border with Lebanon, the Israeli negotiators crossed through at Nakoura. Now, if you want to go fishing for where the crossing is, you can probably figure out by using satellite view. The blue line is here. I think the crossing is somewhat here. This looks to me like an Israeli army compound. And I think you can actually see exactly where the border is here. There's a fence and that would be the very, very irregularly used crossing. You can actually see a Unifil post here. United Nations, Interim Force and Lebanon generally painted all white. And you will see these kind of dotted along the blue line. Unifil army post. That might be another one here or might not. I'm not sure. This is just Google Maps imagery. I'm looking at you can get more sophisticated satellite imagery for sure. So the blue line kind of meanders through Israel. And you can see there are there's a road here. I'm going to do satellite view again. Generally, these are army only roads. You can even tell from satellite view there's no road markings. It's an IDF patrol road, but you can already see here the border fence. You can see it's a concrete fence. You can see a bit of sand here. And you can see somewhere for the army to patrol. And I think, again, you can see Unifil post just after the border there. This is as far as I can go in the Google Maps Zoom. So these roads are not places you can you can usually drive on. And they're usually be signage saying don't drive there. But you can just try your luck if you want to spot any of these borders. Now, before I talk about border spotting, let me just back up for a second. You're like, wait, you're saying that it's a good idea to go up to a border between Israel and Lebanon. I'm actually not not saying it's such a great idea. Caution is advised. I personally haven't been bothered by the IDF at all. And you're going to any of these places. You may be asked questions. I wouldn't go too close. I would not push your luck. Go as far as Israel wants civilians to go and go no further. I've never trespassed on a sign saying army zone, no entry. Really, I'm not just saying that that would be crazy. And there is a real danger. There have been kidnapping attempts and successful kidnappings just across the border. So you can see into Lebanon from certain places. But again, you don't want to go to places where the army doesn't. The Israeli army doesn't want you to to be basically the places you can go. There is. So I've never actually been to this one, Hanita. But it looks to me like there is a cave here. Hasoulam Cave that's very near the border. And you can probably see if you do a bit of advanced research. You can see the kind of views you can expect. Here's what the border fence mostly looks like for Lebanon. Those huge concrete blue lines are not the not the norm. They're just in places where there needs to be fortification. The classic places to view the Israel-Lebanon border to get a sense for how the geopolitics here, how close we are, is actually quite a while away. There are more places of intersection, but a good place you can visit is Miskav. This isn't Israeli kibbutz, as you can see, literally right on the border. And you can drive up to a place here on the western side. And there is a what's called in Hebrew, a tatspeet, a lookout spot. Mitzpo is also another word they use for a lookout point. But if you drive along this road, you'll eventually come to it. It's it's designated and there's people stop there. And as you can see, just across the border, you have a Lebanese town. Adiyat Marayoun at this point. I mean, if you look at the map, we're talking 200 meters here. I got a satellite for you for a sec. You can go here and you can look at all these villages in Lebanon just across the border. And there is a Lebanese road just on the other side of the border. Maybe the best place to go for border fans is Matula. This is actually one of my favorite places in Israel that I visited last week. And if anyone's interested in checking out my videos, I made a video as this place Hageder Hitov, which is really interesting for border folk. And it's also a nice, nice little place. It's not a it's not a, you know, it's a little village. It's not a buzzing, buzzing, buzzing town. But there is actually a half decent bar in the main street called Ayuni. So if you want to drink Lechouf extra strong Belgian beer 400 meters from Lebanon, you can have that experience by going to a place called Ayuni. But otherwise, this is somewhere that there are some interesting places all around Matula is surrounded all around by Lebanon. And there have been various attempts by Hisbalah to a recent one. And I'm not saying this for political propaganda purposes. I'm just generally trying to say cautions and whatever. Hisbalah have recently started shining laser pointers across the border at the eastern part of Matula. So here, basically. So you probably at nighttime want to be extra careful that could happen to you. I made a video here recently, Hageder Hitov. It's marked on the map. If you don't have Hebrew, you can either bookmark this this geopoint or search for the good fence or a good fence monument. And basically what this is, it was a former goodwill. It's a defunct border crossing. It was a goodwill border crossing between Varkila. Ah, sorry. I see there's good fence here listed in in in English, but it's actually the wrong place on the map. I believe this is the right place on the map. There are only a few hundred meters apart. So if you are in Matula, you'll figure out which is the right part of the map. You can't accidentally drive into Lebanon. So there's no need to worry about that. This is Lebanese village of Varkila, where one of the Hezbollah tunnels was found, one of the four that were destroyed by Israel in Operation Northern Shields. Varkila, this is probably the most dramatic Lebanon-Israel border because they're going to satellite view. The village is this is the border along the road here. These are farming fields to the west of Matula. This is the town of Matula itself. And these are this is a private property, but Hageder Hitov is somewhere you can just drive up to, not on someone's private land. If I recall correctly, there was a factory here. And I think where I made my video, I'm pretty sure I was standing right at this point. So literally 30 meters outside of Lebanon, basically. And there is a monument there to the South Lebanese Army, the SLA, which was kind of Israel's proxy slash they fought alongside them during Israel's operation in South Lebanon, very obviously very controversial period between 1985. Thereabouts in 2000. And as I mentioned, that's where the blue line is is based upon is the 2000 withdrawal line. But so Matula is definitely a place worth checking out. You can see Lebanon from pretty much everywhere in Matula from all directions. You've got a village here on the east village here, here, here. Oh, how can I forget? Raja, so Raja, that's as far as I know, I'm getting pronouncing it correct. It's a Ryan letter in Arabic. I was just here last week and I did another video. I'll put a link in this description. Fascinating place. Oh, you may notice it is halfway over the blue line. Raja is the only alawite village in Israel. The alawites are Bashar al-Assad is an alawite. They're a unique religious group. And this is their village in Israel. Now, the story of how a alawite village happened to be half in Lebanon, half in Israel is really, really fascinating. Raja was basically no man's land when Israel conquered the Golan Heights. Then they petitioned the Israeli governor to be in Israel. They identify as Syrians. So there was kind of, well, Lebanon is here, Israel is here. We don't really feel like part of either country. So they wanted to take on the status of Israeli citizenship. Then in 2000, when the blue line was drawn, it was drawn through Raja. So that you had a weird situation whereby between 2000 and 2006, the northern half of the village was in Lebanon. It still is technically in Lebanon, but his Bala were operating in the northern part of the village. And then at some point they Israel decided to occupy the village, if you if you will. Now, again, it's kind of hard to apportion blame here because technically the village residents wanted to be in Israel. It didn't it would be almost impossible to functionally put an international border through the village and have people either families and definitely cut off or have some kind of weird access permit. It would have been a logistical problem. I don't it's unclear exactly when Raja built their fence. When I was there last week, they built a big fence. There was a big fence around the whole village. And that's now why anyone can go in to Raja before they fortified slash built the big fence. Only people living in Raja or those invited like journalists, whatever could visit. It was a special permit style situation. I'm going to just take some more water here. Hey, Raja is not the most fascinating place in the world, besides the border stuff. It is a cool, very, very pretty village. They keep it meticulously clean. And because this IDF policy changed recently, the policy again was there is an IDF checkpoint somewhere like here at the entrance. And before until only about six months ago, you would not be allowed to go into Raja. The IDF would stop you. Now they'll just say hello, go through the checkpoint and anyone can go in because the village is considered, I guess, properly secured. But technically, half of it's over the blue line. As I attempted to show my video, there is no border running through Raja. You can see on satellite view, the blue line falls out on a random street between two pedestrian crossings. There's no demarcation. There's no monument saying you're technically crossing the blue line. This is on the Israeli side. This is on the Lebanese side where I'm waving my mouse. This junctions in Lebanon. This traffic circle or roundabouts in Israel does not does not exist. I just realized I screwed up on my video. I think, yeah, I think I was actually walking towards Israel. And ironically, the Israeli health fund was on the Israeli side. Anyway, that's Ghadjar. So Ghadjar is also a cool place to visit. So let's move on a little bit from Lebanon. So Lebanon's border snakes up, snakes up, snakes up. And then we're in the Golan here, just across from Shiba in Lebanon, after which the Shiba farms are called because the Shiba farms or the Shiba to get the Arabic a bit more correct is on this on the Israeli side of the border. Well, technically, actually, the Shiba farms straddle the Lebanese Israeli border that's on both sides, 14 different farms. But they're roughly here. And after the Israeli hormone, we're already into the DMZ. So there actually is no border just with Syria, as I mentioned, it's a border with the with the undef DMZ. The DMZ has two lines, as you can see, one line here and one line here. This is line alpha. This is line Bravo and in between is the DMZ. Now, Israel builds its border fence, of course, around line alpha. So for all intents and purposes, this is, you know, the Syrian border fence. But to be pedantic, it's actually the border fence with the undef DMZ. Now, if you go into Magdal Shams, the Druze village, which is where I see the beauty about my border adventures in Israel is but through the medium of borders, I've discovered all these really cool places. Not that Magdal Shams is a big secret or anything. It's the Druze capital of Israel, a very well known place. But it's taken me to the really interesting parts of the country. And Magdal Magdal is certainly worth the village, especially the alias mean restaurant. Grace, great food. Within Magdal, you can, if you want to see the Syrian border fence, it's not that difficult to just drive up to this road on the east. And street view is maybe, maybe we have street view here. Here we go. So what you're looking at, I was this is exactly where I was before. This is the eastern outskirt of Magdal Magdal Shams. And the border fence you're seeing here is the Syrian border. We're looking east here into the into Syria slash the DMZ. These are houses. These would be in Syria. And this would be a UN position, as far as I'm aware. And this is Israel's border fence, snaking her up up the mountain as it goes. Very mountainous part of the country over here. Very interesting topography. So that's Syrian border fence. Another place that I went recently was this place on the map, the Syrian headquarters. It's it's I did a video here again. If you're I'll put a link to it in the description. If those really interested, it's a bombed out disused former Syrian command post that was abandoned after the Six Day War. And today, the building is kind of in decrepit condition. But no railings on the ground. It's a little bit little bit of a place to be careful about. But as you can see, let me just go back to the map here. It is actually only 200 meters from the border. I didn't realize it was actually that close. It's basically on the border with Syria. So that's the place to go and you can see my video and it's basically filled with graffiti and it's just this. It's like the shell that remains of an army compound that Israel bombed a few times because it was strategic to the 60 war efforts. Anyone can go there. This is a border fence you can see here. This is the border here as well. And yeah, that is basically what there is to see there. On the other side is Al-Qunaitra, which is kind of a relic of a city. It was sort of been abandoned. So technically, yes, this is in Syria. There was fighting here between the Syrian army forces and rebels that you could literally hear from across the border. But so it's very close. And you can also see there's actually a on-dof camp. Camp Ziyuni, which is located right here by the DMZ. And you've got more stuff in Syria there. The on-dof, so interestingly, there is a regular crossing between Israel and Syria called the Qunaitra Crossing. It's operated by on-dof. And border fans must watch the movie, The Syrian Bride, because it shows what this irregular crossing is used for. It's used by Druze who want to study in Syria. They bring apples from the Syrian Golan through to the Israeli Golan slash Israeli occupied Golan through this crossing. The usual UN people, diplomats, clergy, the usual kind of groups of accepted people can go through it. And you can see, again, on satellite view, it's actually quite easy to see all this stuff. You can see here is the on-dof camp Ziyuni. And the checkpoint, the crossing is here. You can see the checkpoint terminal. None of this is, it's not marked on the map, although the geo-coordinates of the crossing here are publicly available. None of this is classified info. And this is already on the Syrian side of the crossing and the actual gate. Famous gate from the movie, from the Syrian Bride movie is right there. So that's Syria and the DMZ kind of continues meandering its way down the country for a little bit. If you drive this road 98, you can see it on the left-hand side. As you drive southbound, you'll see this Syrian city in Sa'idah, to your left, driving southbound, et cetera. Now we have changed countries again because we had a border here, a tri, a tri. Oh, this is a confusing one. This is a tri border. Syria here, Jordan here, this is a Syrian Jordanian border, and Israel here, and the DMZ here. So there's the river, the Yamuki river. Ah, Mitspeh shloshatagvulot, that means in Hebrew. The viewpoint of the three borders named after the borders. You can see the border fence here. So that would be Syria. So we'd probably be looking here into Syria left, Israel in the foreground, Syria top left, Jordan right. So Jordan, Syria. So this is, you see, there's always more border spotting, just when you think you've seen every place of interest on the border. Nope, I have to go here now. I have to add it to my list. So this is the, so now we're looking at the Jordanian border. The Jordanian border follows, so we're now looking at Israel Jordan here. We're following the course of the Yamuki River, Yamuki River, going southbound. Eli Kohn, stop two. There's now an Eli Kohn trail. Mitspeh Gesher Elchama is a name, and I'm not gonna go into all these places. Suffice to say, again, I haven't been here either. There's more border places to go to. And Eli Kohn, this is named after the Israeli spy, Eli Kohn, who was ultimately hung, Mossad Operative, ultimately hung in Damascus, and there is now something in the Golan called the Eli Kohn Trail, sites where he visited during the course of his intelligence operations, gathering reconnaissance about Syrian defenses in the Golan when it was controlled by Syria before 67. So jumping quickly through the Jordanian border, jumping down Jordanian border, Jordanian border, Jordanian border. An interesting place to see the border is a place called Kosar Eli Adiz. One interesting place here called Damia Bridge. This is a former bridge land border crossing that's been just used. Today, there are three border crossings in use, there is Alambi, there is Sheik Hossein, and there is the crossing in Acaba. So this isn't an exit crossing anymore, but it was a former crossing across the river here. And Mokashim, Mokshim, I should say sorry, that means mines in Israel. If you don't reach Hebrew, be aware that these RNG signs you might see, particularly near border areas are warnings about minefields and not all the mines have been cleared. So definitely be extremely careful about that. Then we have the, so I'm just gonna jump through the land section of the Jordan border. Then the Jordan border, and Kosar Eli Ahud is an interesting place actually that I just didn't want to miss here. I'm just gonna actually type it in. Okay, Kosar Eli Ahud is located. I was struggling to see it on the map there. It's just a little bit north of, it's on the way between the start of the Dead Sea and where we just, and this border crossing. These are two border crossings with Jordan regular border crossings, King Hossein border crossing and the King Abdullah Bridge. But Kosar Eli Ahud's in the middle and this is a, interesting, it's a baptismal site, but it's one of the places where, you know, it's rich. I mean, the border here is the Jordan River, right? So this site on the back and the background is in Jordan. You will see Jordanian soldiers here, Israeli soldiers here. And to answer the question of what happens if you want to go for a swim in the sea, they actually have buoys or boys as I would call them growing up. The soldiers will make sure you don't literally swim across the river. And I'm sure the Jordanians would turn you back to, you can see the Jordanian flag flying on their side of the border, better shot of it here. And these are people on the Israeli side of the border of the border and the Jordanian river actually forms the, the border itself. I'm going to skip the Jordan, the rest of the Jordan border because it's actually kind of massive. It goes all the way from, follows through the center point of the Dead Sea. Technically, when you go swimming in the Dead Sea, it's an inconsistency. There's usually easy signs in Israel saying border ahead of you. Technically that's, you know, Israel's border, right? You, if you were to swim, not that you can swim for more than a few minutes on the Dead Sea, not that you can swim in the Dead Sea, but if you could swim in the Dead Sea, you technically the border would be somewhere like halfway between Israel and Jordan. Jordan has a side of the Dead Sea as well, as can be seen here clearly. One more side of interest in the Jordanian border and another place I do have to visit on my border spotting adventures is the land border with Acaba. This is the Jordanian city on the Jordanian side of the coast on the Israeli side is the Elat side. There is a regular border crossing between Acaba and Jordan. I'm trying to remember exactly where it is. I think it's a little bit like, it doesn't matter. Oh, here we go. It's for being border terminal. So this is the actual crossing. This is a regular land crossing between Israel and Jordan. You can go through it, no problems. But there's also naturally a border here on the beach. And I'm very curious to know where this border actually falls out. It's on my to-do list to get to as far as you can go on the Israeli side. And you can see there's a little sort of jettison demarcating the Jordanian side of the border there as well. So that's Israel, Jordan. The end of the border is in Elat. And then we have the Egypt border. Now, the Egypt border starts here in Taba and one can cross into the border in Taba, in Egypt, in the Sinai, I've done it. I've been in Taba, been in the Egyptian Sinai. It's a land crossing. It's not a lot of fun to cross. You think it's really easy to go through a land crossing for whatever reason or you might think it is. It's not. It's a pain. You have to present. You have to exit Israel. It's interesting. It works. You have to exit Israel. You have to pay money, leave Israel. Then walk through the tunnel, open a gate. Then you're officially in Egypt. Then you need to go into an Egyptian terminal and pay for your visa in Egypt. The whole thing I think took like an hour. And I don't know if that was maybe considered quick. So it's not as easy as what I think. Where is the border? It's just right before the border crossing and on the Egyptian side. I don't think there's anything there. I think there's like a diving school here, aquatic world. Now the Egypt border fence starts right here and you can actually see it on the map of the satellite imagery. Looks like it's been blurred for security reasons, but you can see it despite the blurring, the huge fence here. Or rather the Israeli, just in the land, just in front of the border and just after the border has been blurred, it seems. And it's an intense fence. And as you can see here, it doesn't always follow the border. This is an example of Israel building the fence before the border, right? You can see the border is here and Israel has put the fence here. So they're actually giving up about, if we measure the distance here, 34 meters of Israeli territory if assuming the border line here is accurate, that Israel is seating in the interest of keeping a little buffer on the Egyptian side and you can see Egyptian army positions, I think just there. Anyway, let's go back to map view here and I'll tell you where you can see the border. There is a road called road 10 and I did a video about this in the summer. This is road 12 and it bifurcates or it forks onto road 10 somewhere like here. And this is now an army only road but it is open to civilians certain days of the year and it's a bit of a process. You need to enter where it opens. You need to exit where they say, where the Israeli army says you can exit. Most of the time it's only for army use but it's a road right on the border so it's a border and it's amazing, amazing road. The views over the Sinai are absolutely spectacular and because it's kind of at this point it was closed for security reasons because at this point it's popular among kind of Israeli motorcycle groups and car enthusiasts so even the days it's open you won't find like that many people there. There are regular IDF checkpoints so when you even go on the road they're gonna stop you periodically to say to make sure that whoever comes on gets off. You can't stay there. You need to come on and come off before dawn so it's quite tightly regulated but if you wanna see the Egyptian border fence this is somewhere you can do it. Another thing that's, another place you can see is in Nitzana and Kadesh Barnea. This is also right on the fence and you don't need to have road 10 open. You can just drive into it regularly and I also did a video here. There's a cool winery in Kadesh Barnea that I recommend visiting if you're interested in wine making as well and yes there is wine made in the desert so that's definitely a cool place to check out and you'll be right on the Egyptian border. Final borders I'll talk about are the de facto borders with the PA territories. One of them is the Gaza Strip and as I mentioned Gaza is really just the one place that there is absolutely no way it's under the control of a extremist terrorist regime. Dangerous scale on one to 10 is 100 so it's only somewhere that diplomats and specially invited people would go but there is a crossing at Erez here in the north. The Gaza Strip itself is not as big as one might expect from the news coverage in fact it's very small. It's kind of wedged here at the bottom southwest corner of Israel between Ashdod and Rafah which is on both sides of the border. There's Egyptian Rafah and there's Gazan Rafah as well and there's a border crossing at Rafah and yes I'm trying to pronounce the Arabic right. You can if you're interested in seeing this part of the country, seeing Gaza say that without judgment. If you want to see it from a distance there are all these Israeli towns along the border I wrote the most famous one but the actual closest one is Nativ HaAsara which can be accessed by driving off Route 4 and it's actually almost at the Erez checkpoint. The road continues to Erez. The last time I was there there was a ton of traffic going to and from Erez the checkpoint and I was like who are all these people coming into the Gaza? I don't know. Anyway, I guess that's neither here nor there and in Nativ HaAsara you can see there's an intense, this is what it looks like. I did a video here too. It's intense at the end. There's a big concrete barricade which they built to protect the community from shelling and sniper fire and bombs from Gaza into them. There's a lot of this concrete and army watch towers and it's a very sensitive part of the country but you can go there. You can go down there and there is a lookout and it was, I enjoyed speaking when I was down there to local residents about what their life is like. The actual border on the sea is in a beach called Zikim. Here, this is as far south as you can really go. Tragically mentally ill Israeli guy actually voluntarily crossed from Israel into Gaza by walking over the beach crossing and he's now being held by Hamas. So don't do anything like this and I would not recommend going really south of the Zikim beach. It's already, let's just see out of interest and trig. It's 2.5 kilometers north of the actual where the border is on the sea coast with Gaza. So it's very close and there's also a real concern about rocket fire in this part of the country that if there are rockets from Gaza, when you're in Zikim and Starrot and even Ashdod and Ashkelon, you're well within rocket fire range. So definitely if you're thinking about exploring this part of the country, always check the news before it could happen at any time. Rocket fire could start at any time but if it's in the middle of a period of rocket, active rocket fire, it would be a very bad idea to go towards this part of Israel just as a sort of FYI. Then in the West Bank, I mean, it's complicated, it's own complicated situation. Israel's built a border fence around, as I mentioned, areas A, the area A cities of the West Bank, such as Bethlehem, Ramallah, Janine, Tulkaram, Kalkiliya, et cetera. And that entails going over the green line and driving into that part of the country and it's usually the Palestinian area A and B stuff, mostly area A actually is on that side, the far side of the Israel West Bank security barrier, has other names according to different political, people with very different political ideologies but leave it at that. I think that's enough 45 minutes worth of border spotting a tour. I hope if you're interested, that's given you some ideas. Again, just my caution, having done a lot of this, having me into a lot of these places is, it is fine if you're, a lot of Israelis are curious about looking into neighboring countries. I think what I get out of it is imagining what it would be like if there were no borders. And there are interesting places where you can go and observe the borders, you can observe if you want, how close Hizballah is to Israel by going to Matula or Misgav Am and you will actually be able to see without telephoto lenses or anything like that, you'll be able to see Hizballah flags. You can go to the Egyptian border road is well worth doing if you like interesting drives. And the Jordanian border is less interesting but there and the Syrian border is a DMZ border but you can see it at Magill Shams particularly. It's just on the edge of the town running along and you can look into Syria. So, and these are all tiny, so on the same day you could conceivably do Lebanese border, Syrian border, Jordanian border and even go to that tri border lookout place that I found. Egypt, no, it's quite a bit south but you could do all these borders in two days if you were some client. Hope that was useful. If you're a border fan, these are the places I've been. I didn't even cover all the interesting places. There is for instance, a biblical tomb on the Lebanese border called the tomb of Rav Ashi from the biblical period who is technically the, even the tomb is half in Lebanon. It's called in Hebrew, Keve Rav Ashi. You need special permission from the IDF to go there. I haven't been there yet. I might go there one day. There's always more to see but if you've got a two day itinerary in Israel these would be the sort of maybe top line places I can recommend going to for a geopolitical border tour. Thanks for watching and if you wanna get more videos from me about stuff related to Israel, Jerusalem and maybe the border video thrown in for a good measure then do consider subscribing to the YouTube channel and thank you very much for watching the video.