By the time I’d finished this imaginary one-way conversation with al-Muallid we were nearly back in Damascus. Although Quneitra’s die were cast during the Six Day War, the actual devastation to the place that we saw today was as a result of the Yom Kippur War six years later. This time the Israelis were caught napping, the war was “a damn close run thing” as old Thunderboots would say and the Israeli response in victory was “never again”.
This time on 6 October 1973, during Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Egypt and Syria tried again. Again there was Soviet backing.
From the Syrian point of view the 1973 conflict was as much about restoring their honor and that of their dictator as about recapturing the Golan Heights. Samir drew parallels with the Bush family’s adventures in Iraq, but then he would. Before the Six Day War, the Syrians had used the vantage of the Golan Heights to shell Israeli fishermen at random on the Sea of Galilee and to pick off Israeli farmers in the Hula Basin. The Israel victory had put an end to that harassment, but with no formal end of hostilities the Syrian dictator felt humiliated.
While the Egyptians attacked in the south, the Syrians launched a Soviet-style massive frontal assault across the Golan Heights, and this time had considerable Soviet air defense systems to stop Israel’s air force counter-attacking. The Israeli defensive strategy was to hold the line with a minimal deployment and air cover until reserves could be brought to the front. The Syria offensive strategy was to complete the ground offensive by massively superior force before the reservists could arrive and to minimize the Israeli air force prowess with the Soviet ground-to-air missiles.
Over the next three days there were tremendous losses on both sides. On the fourth day the reservists arrived, the Syrian command was stalled by indecision, and once the tide had turned, demoralization set in again and the final Israeli victory was quick and decisive. This time the Syrians were driven back beyond Quneitra, and a year later UNDOF established a buffer zone, a zone they still buffer today, the one in which Mark Twain camped, the one in which the querulous al-Muallid has built his extraordinary hotel and the one in which Gillian, Samir and I have come to a dead end.
14 There is more than one way of praying and I like the butcher’s because the petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. Letter, 1879
15 The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly, teaches me to suspect my own is also. Conway’s Sacred Anthology
16It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can. Is Shakespeare Dead?
17 The first thing a missionary teaches a savage is indecency. Mark Twain’s Notebook
18 We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticize. Letter 1902
19 When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn’t know. Mark Twain’s Notebook
20 I’ve been to the circus three or four times - lots of times. Church ain’t a circumstance to a circus. Tom Sawyer: A Play
21 A wanton waste of projectiles. The Art of War, 1881
4: The Detour
amir, Gillian and I are standing behind a red and white striped barrier. Across it lies a disorganized red, white and black Syrian flag. Two border guards are loafing about playing backgammon quietly in the shade. Our passports are lying idle beside them while we are taking photographs and ruing our blocked route. I say goodbyes to the Excursionists up ahead. The caravan- serai, with its swaying cargo of two Middle Eastern dragomen, nineteen Arab porters, twenty-six pack-mules and camels, twelve horses, seven American Protestant biblical enthusiasts and one American journalist in rather a foul mood, drifts serenely into the near distance. From the dragomen Abraham in the lead to Mohammed in the rear, the caravanserai stretches over and past the one hundred-yard no-man’s-land that now separates Syria from Israel. As Mohammed passes the first UNDOF watchtower on the Israeli side we turn our thoughts on how to meet up with them again. It’s time for The Detour.
Firstly, the easy part. From Damascus Samir takes us to the Syria/Lebanon border: one (sorrowful) hour. From the border we catch a shared taxi to Beirut: two (terrifying) hours. After the usual barrage of bargaining abuse we then take a regular taxi from the transport depot to the Automobile et Touring Club du Liban in Jounieh: one (gridlocked and bad-tempered) hour. We open up Vasco da Gama; she seems pleased enough to see us, we give her a shower and a refill, take one of each ourselves, and wander over to the clubhouse to watch the World Cup semi-finals: Holland 3 Paraguay 2.
Secondly, the paperwork part. The next morning we gird up our loins for the wearisome bureaucracy of sailing out of Lebanon and into Israel. Out of Lebanon one does not breezily depart; into Israel one does not breezily arrive.
The process involves subterfuge with the former and patience with the latter.
It also involves the start of the passage planning as all concerned need to know where we will be and when we will be there.
When the Quaker City and the bulk of the Excursionists left Beirut for Joppa, now Jaffa, they stopped off at all the evocative biblical ports now forbidding yachts entry: Sidon and Tyre, currently in Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, and Acre, now in Israel. After Acre they anchored off Haifa, in 1867 a small fishing village but with an increasing Jewish population - Haifa was one of the early centers of political Zionism. Haifa is also our destination, the most northerly of Israel’s ports of entry. For the Quaker City coastal hopping to Haifa meant a passage of sixty nautical miles, about seventy regular miles. For Vasco da Gama, having to skirt around international waters and warzone reporting points, the same journey becomes ninety nautical miles. We average five knots, five nautical miles per hour, so have to plan on an eighteen-hour voyage, which means an overnight passage.
As we leave Jounieh marina, just north of Beirut, the following evening the harbormaster finishes his instructions with the explanation, “... because we are at war with Israel”. And so they consider themselves to be; for the time war without bullets and bombs, but at war in every other way they can think of - and boy, can they think of them. As a result the Lebanese authorities will not issue exit papers for Israel-bound vessels. The standard procedure is to check out to Larnaca in Cyprus, make a passage west for thirteen miles (one mile into international waters) and then make a 100° turn to port to fashion a southerly course to Israeli waters while staying over twelve miles off the Lebanese coast. This adds quite a dogleg onto the journey, and we chose a variation on the theme, checking out to Port Said, Egypt. The advantage of this latter subterfuge is that the course to Port Said is south- westerly, and one can justifiably chose a waypoint twelve miles offshore in the south-western corner of Lebanese waters to transit from Lebanese to international waters.
So with that ruse de guerre in place it’s time to deal with the Israelis. There is an entry procedure - one suspects deliberately Delphic to deter the daydreamers - that involves emailing the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) with one’s intentions and requesting the form “Yacht IMOT” in return. The IDF are as efficient as burdensome and back whizzes the IMOT straight away. One fills it in online. The questions are the usual suspects: Who? How many whos? Whence? Where before whence? Why? Any other whys? When? Arriving when and departing when? What? What yacht, what flag, what size, what weapons? Our IMOT will be circulated to Israel Navy stations on shore and at sea and all the answers we give tested against those on the IMOT - and so I trundle off to find a printer so that the IDF and we are reading the same answers.
Thirdly, the enjoyable part. Well, the sea passage is usually an enjoyable part but we are apprehensive about the warzone aspect of this one. We leave Beirut at four in the afternoon, planning to arrive in Haifa at ten the next morning and thereby avoid the worst of the Levant midday heat. One-off night passages
have their own rhythms, rhythms impossible to predict as the body cannot swiftly adapt to regular night watches as both bodies become tired at the same time: bed time. Couples sail all over the oceans and soon by necessity settle into a watch system but every voyage starts with a few nights of unsettled watches as bodies adapt to their new sleeping rhythms. Everyone has their favorite on/off watch rota, and ours is no watches from sunrise to sunset and then three hours on/three hours off throughout the night. Some crews prefer to swap the first watch every other night to alternate the grave- yard watch just before dawn, when it is not just the darkest hour, but also the tiredest, hungriest and loneliest; others prefer set watches to assist the body clock. Either way you do get to see the sun rise, as the sunrise does get to see you. It’s important that the captain does not become too tired - and must never be dog-tired - as tiredness causes wrong decisions and wishful thinking. Seamanship is a mixture of common sense egged on by experience, instinct to deal with troubles arising and intuition to foresee the troubles before they arise. Or as the old sea saw says, “Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.” Tiredness prevents intuition keeping trouble at bay and dulls the instinct when trouble then does arise - and when the common sense asks the tired brain for mental deductions the cogs in the brain trip over themselves. At least that’s what happened to this captain once in the North Sea.
Apologies, one digresses. Now, Lebanese waters are tightly controlled by an entity called Operational Control, or Oscar Charlie in VHF radio-speak. On our passage we report our position just west of the Beirut lighthouse as requested and are then told to exit Lebanese waters twelve miles due west of there, the standard entry and exit route for commercial shipping. Luckily they sympathize with my plea for an old and slow sailing boat being unable to hold the westerly course in the westerly wind and permit us to exit by their south-west corner as in the passage plan.
By now it is dusk and we settle down for a long night of interference from the Lebanon Navy. A month before, arriving from Syria - a country not too ill disposed towards Lebanon - we felt like we had been part of a Lebanon Navy war exercise. Now we are dreading how much worse it is going to be as we head towards their sworn enemy to the south. But of the Lebanon Navy there is not a squeak nor sight and we sail into an empty void, passing the old Phoenician and biblical ports of Sidon and Tyre - now in Hezbollah’s hands - which no one is allowed to visit by sea. At times we have to remind ourselves we are in the busy Mediterranean at all; in vain the eyes scan the horizon for signs of ships’ lights; the radar on six miles range sees nothing, nor on twelve miles; the chart plotter sees no Automatic Identification System (AIS) trian- gles, the large ship movement indicators that that tell yachts when and where the former are about to run down the latter.We reason that no cruising boats are out because of the 8.00 p.m. curfew in Lebanese waters, no fishing boats are out because of the curfew and the dead sea, and no patrol boats are out because... well, that is the mystery, unsolved until we see what Israel’s Navy has to offer, then understood with some sympathy.
It is four a.m. and I’m on deck alone with this notebook, a pen, a torch and an empty coffee mug - oh, and half a Snickers, soon to be dispatched. I cannot claim we are sorry to be leaving Lebanon. It strikes us as a most unhappy and inharmonious country, and one heading inexorably to war. Most countries at war long for peace but in Lebanon the mood is snappy and ugly, the love of hatred deep and internecine; if they can’t find a war soon with someone else they’ll have another one with themselves.
In some countries - and Turkey comes to mind - any political unpleasant- ness one encounters ashore can easily be dispelled by casting off and sailing in its beautiful waters - a case of burying your head in the sea. Not so in Lebanon where the mess ashore is a mirror to the mess afloat. There are no fishing boats as there are no fish - and no seabirds. The sea is, however, full of plastic bags of every denomination, many of them semi-submersible and looking to get themselves tangled up in your propeller or clog up your engine intake, and countless empty plastic bottles bobble decoratively on the surface. Every movement between ports is met with an outrageous bill for “agent’s fees” and is anyway subject to monitoring by Big Brother, Oscar Charlie. Any unreported movement will soon be followed by a visit from a Lebanese Navy patrol boat, endless questions and the inevitable on-the-spot “fine”. Anchoring is forbidden anywhere; and anyway there’s that 8.00 p.m. curfew on all yachts. The harbormaster at Beirut Marina told me, “We don’t need or want visiting sailing yachts here,” a sentiment to describe, Jounieh apart, the unfortunate country of Lebanon as a whole.
As the graveyard watch welcomes in the first glimmer of grey, and as the Distance to Waypoint - the exit point from Lebanese waters and into international waters - counts down to below five miles, and the Time to Waypoint suggests we have an hour to run, I notice a radar blip coming from the starboard quarter. On the radar screen we have all kinds of Clever Clogs - and I’m afraid I have no idea of how of any of this works but I do know how to work it - and one of the Clogs tells me the blip is heading straight for us, while another Clog declares the blip is travelling at twelve knots. The blip is now large enough to warrant an AIS signal, but none was forthcoming; a sure sign of someone’s warship.
An hour later the Waypoint Alarm sounds, then just two cables into inter- national waters the VHF radio comes to life. “This is United Nations warship Varn.Vessel at 33 degrees 09.78 minutes north and 034 degrees 52.49 minutes east, identify yourself.” The voice is a tired female nasal monotone, with no early hint of a nationality.
Gillian looks at the readout and says, “That’s us,” quickly followed by, “your turn.”
And so it is. I reply: “Warship Varn, this is the sailing vessel Vasco da Gama, Vasco da Gama. We are the vessel at 33 degrees 09.78 minutes north and 034 degrees 52.49 minutes east. Channel 11.”
Then from Varn: “Sailing vessel responding, spell your vessel’s name.” I do. Then: “OK, that’s Vasco da Gama.” A Canadian, tired, female nasal monotone, I’m beginning to think. “What are your intentions?”
“My intentions, madam, are entirely honorable, and furthermore they are now in international waters. But for the record we are out of Beirut for Haifa, ETA Israeli waters 0830 Zulu. Passage plan filed with Israeli Navy.”
“It not my intention to impair or impede your passage, but under United Nations Resolution 283 you are required to provide additional security information. What is your crew?”
“We are two souls on board, myself the captain and my wife the admiral.”
“I’m sorry, captain, I didn’t copy that,” the tired, female, Canadian nasal monotone replies. “Please say again.”
I say again, and a lot more besides. Fifteen minutes later we say our goodbyes. Dawn is now well established and we are on deck enjoying fresh coffee. Thirty minutes later: “Vessel at 33 degrees 05.86 minutes north and 034 degrees 48.15 minutes east, this is Israeli Navy. Identify yourself.”
Although international waters is generally accepted to mean twelve miles offshore, Israel has upped her boundary to fifteen miles. Of course it’s not worth arguing the toss, as their ability to mess you around is almost unlimited.
Before she has another chance to delegate, I say to Gillian, “your turn” and she repeats much the same information, again on channel 11, being careful to read from the IMOT crib sheet. They tell her we have been under observation since leaving Jounieh. One hour later the same details are requested again, my turn this time, all bang on the IMOT button.
By nine in the morning, post-porridge and pre-elevenses, we are well within sight of the new industrial port of Haifa and close enough to lament the building of skyscrapers on Mount Carmel. We are just saying “thank heavens, that’s the Israel Navy over and done with”, when a patrol boat zooms up alongside and in a great wallow of bow wash slows down to our five knots. We were only thirty or forty yards apart, and both
on handheld radios.
We are chatting away about this and that - and finding out that as we were sailing through the Lebanon void Spain had beaten Germany 1-0 in the World Cup semi-finals - when he must notice the camera hanging around Gillian’s neck.
“Captain, your crew is not allowed to photograph any Israeli Navy vessel.” I assure him she hasn’t done so. A moment later he says lightly, “I like your boat. What is she?” I explain, then he laughs: “Nice, and I have photographed yours.” I say I had already assumed that and we give each other a friendly wave goodbye.
In Haifa we see several more Israeli Navy warships. Being a bit of a peacenik I’ve never really taken too much notice of warships before, but now I begin to understand why the Lebanese Navy elects to stay up north. Warships, as I used to glue them together at homework time, had big guns on turrets fore and aft, and some lesser guns running along the sides. These Israeli Navy warships forget about the guns and major on the missiles; dozens of them, stacked in rows and columns, some with enormous grey launching tubes, others with shorter more pugnacious black short range tubes. One extraordinary warship had a sharpish, almost chine, hull form, and was matt charcoal. Gillian obeys instructions about not taking photographs, although of course I cannot resist looking it up on Wikipedia later, and for any spy interested she is INS Hanit, a Sa’ar 5-class corvette.
Innocence and War Page 13
