Signs in the Golan

Okay, I guess I've kept you all waiting long enough. It's time to reveal the meaning of the signs in the Golan that I talked about a couple of weeks ago. First, here's the Hebrew (the only writing on the signs):

זהירות
מעבר טנקים

Here my transliteration:

Z'hirut
Ma'avar tankim

And, finally, the moment you've all been waiting for ....

dramatic pause

... the English translation:

Caution
Tank crossing

Israel keeps a lot of tanks and other forces in the Golan to prevent a re-occurrence of what happened in the Yom Kippur War, when Syrian forces swept through the Golan, and Israel was very nearly destroyed entirely, something that was only prevented by some very brave and exhausting fighting.

Tank treads, however, are hard on paved roads, so the tanks mostly travel on dirt roads and tank trails (well, at least in peace time!). The signs, of course, indicate where these trails cross the regular roads, which are reinforced with concrete at those points.

So, there you have it: the meaning of the signs, and a little background on why they are there.

Transliteration of the Golan road signs

That last post (with the road sign pictures) reminded me that I haven't yet posted the transliteration of the signs we saw in the Golan last week. Here it is:

Z'hirut! Ma'avar tankim.

In a few more days, I'll try to remember to post the English translation of this.

Trip to the Golan

I had no classes today until this evening, so we decided to pack a picnic lunch and take a drive to the Golan. So, we drove down the hill to Rosh Pinna, past Mishmar Ha-Yarden, across the Jordan River, and up into the Golan. We took a road we had not been on, highway 978, up the middle of the Golan to Masa'deh, one of the Druze towns. From there, we continued northeast into an area of many orchards: mostly apples and peaches, I think. After that, we took the road to the Har Khermon (Mount Hermon) ski area. We parked in the shade of a tree just before the place where we would have had to pay to enter and ate our lunch. We decided not to pay the 100 shekels that it would have cost us to enter, to ride the ski lift, and to have a guided tour. We'll do that some other time. After that, we drove home, passing by Nimrod's Fortress (a medieval ruin of an anti-Crusader fortress), the Banias, and Tel Dan. We continued through Kiryat Shmona south on highway 90 to Rosh Pinna and then back up the hill to Tsfat.

While driving up highway 978, I saw some signs that I don't remember seeing before (on other roads). Now, most highway signs in Israel are in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, but these were only in Hebrew. Here's what they said:

זהירות
מעבר טנקים

See if you can figure out what they mean. Tomorrow, I'll give you the transliteration, and later I'll give the translation. :-)