Made in the 1970s in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, “Gate To Paradise” was presented by the Jewish National Fund. The film is a short that shows the Jewish settlement and development of the captured Golan Heights. An Israeli man drives a tractor while smoking a cigarette. Views from the upper Golan Heights show the new settlements and agriculture fields. Tourists stand on a former Syrian bunker in the Golan. Fishermen prep nets on Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee (02:05). Footage from the point of view of a driver shows a car driving down a highway in the Golan Heights (03:05). Tractors and other heavy machines are used to grade terrain next to Lake Kinneret (03:57). Engineers oversee the work. A farmer walks through a field (05:54). Men ride horses and herd cattle on a pasture in the Golan (06:19). The film then shows viewers the waterfalls of Banias Nature Reserve (07:44), the fields of Kibbutz Dan (08:58) with an abandoned Syrian tank sitting in one of the fields, and people picnicking at Tel Dan Nature Reserve. Men move irrigation pipes (11:26). Settlers of Kibbutz Merom Golan move into former Syrian officer quarters. Tourists visit a small café run by the Kibbutz; IDF soldiers also visit the café. The film then shows a new settlement, El Al, and several other new settlements in the Golan. Druze plow their fields with animal-drawn plows (16:10). Machines build a road up Mount Hermon. The film shows the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hermon. Some people ski on the slopes, while others waterski on Lake Kinneret. People harvest grapes on the Golan Plateau (18:53), and then the film ends with a shot of the waters of Lake Kinneret.
The Golan Heights or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant, spanning about 1,800 square kilometres (690 sq mi). The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between disciplines: as a geological and biogeographical region, the Golan Heights is a basaltic plateau bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east; and as a geopolitical region, the Golan Heights is the area captured from Syria and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War, territory which Israel effectively annexed in 1981. This region includes the western two-thirds of the geological Golan Heights, as well as the Israeli-occupied part of Mount Hermon.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
