Oh god loads more stuff, it just keeps on coming.

OK, I can't be doing with chatting much about Kiryat Shimona right now. Mooli is as great as I remembered, Liz was reluctant to leave. The Golan region is strange, occupied, military, grasped tightly with all claws extended. We stayed last night in the oddest vast 'youth hostel', the architecture of which resonated strangely with Ben Gurion Airport. Maybe tomorrow I will go into the bomb shelters again with you good people (they are marvellously well decorated), and gaze out of the Community Stress Prevention Centre's windows again at where the rockets hit last summer and torched the woods.

Potted history of the area - Israel nicked it off Syria a while back and its indigenous population, the Druze (unique culture, monotheistic religion) are ambivalent about whether they want to be given back or not. Frankly, my dears, I suspect the Israeli powers that be do not give a damn about your opinions, mixed or not, they are there for your strategic importance as a bit of land.

(Here is a picture with what do with a bit of land of strategic importance. Just in case you've got one spare lying around.)

However, we had the loveliest afternoon on the borders of Lebanon, Israel and Syria with our new acquaintance, Rajaa. She is liberated, chilled, home loving, generous and open. She has a fabulous home too, a dab hand with the decor: warm toasty burner, Danish pictures from a random danish friend, handsome babies scattered about, and an extraordinarily beautiful husband safely tucked up serving in his cafe. We picked her up in there, not him, sadly. She works in a local University which was luckily for us on strike today, and does peace work with Jewish and Druze Youth.

Although identifying herself strongly as Syrian she is not keen on giving up her car, job, opinions and freedom as a woman on the edges of Israel to risk enforced Hijab wearing and sexual oppression under an Islamic state. She agrees that this is not the case with her Druze sisters in Lebanon, but they are not the ones likely to be handed her chunk of land in any possible peace settlement with Syria. Tricky. But we didn't promise you easy politics here.

[This is the Druze flag, Rajaa can megaphone from here to her Uncle - this is the border. His house is one the other side - 500metres away]

Great vibe in her town. Won't bore with our theorising about it all this afternoon - suffice it to say the Druze of the Golan rock - gorgeous and open and clear - best of luck to them and all who sail with them...