It must be the most beautiful front line in the world. Turn right at the ancient city of Qatna, drive east for 40 miles and you'll come to a village called Telwared, the "Hill of Roses". There are fields of yellow flowers, sheep and cattle and almond orchards and an old T-62 tank and then a series of largely empty, slightly sinister two-storey houses and a row of gentle hills to the south. That's where
Isis holds its ground, an ideology quite divorced from all this beauty and bright sky and sunlight.
They're just the other side of the low mountain range to the south which stretches all the way across to
Palmyra. But it's difficult to shrug off the lethargy. Surely the old shepherd sitting with his back to the road, two cows tethered beside him, isn't worried about the war. Can the children playing with their mother behind a red-painted house have the slightest idea why there's a
Syrian army checkpoint down the road at Jibl Jarrah, the very last bit of territory before the forward troops of the shrinking Isis caliphate?
The great geopolitical battles in Iraq seem far away until you notice the contrails sweeping the skies far above Jibl Jarrah and the military map in the local company headquarters which depicts three bleak grey and black circles to the right. "South al-Mushairfeh, east Habra, west Habra" are written in them. Isis holds these villages to this day.
Comment: Israel may find its plans aren't as easy to realize as it seems to think. Psychopaths can turn violent when they run up against reality.