This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Quneitra (also Al Qunaytirah, Qunaitira, or Kuneitra; Arabic: ٱلْقُنَيْطِرَة or ٱلْقُنَيطْرَة, al-Qunayṭrah or al-Qunayṭirah pronounced [æl qʊˈneɪ̯tˁ(ɨ)rɑ]) is the largely destroyed and abandoned capital of the Quneitra Governorate in south-western Syria.

Since 1974, pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 350 and the Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria, the city is inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone.

Quneitra was founded in the Ottoman era as a way station on the caravan route to Damascus and subsequently became a garrison town of some 20,000 people.

[1] Writing during the inter-war period, the American traveler Harriet-Louise H. Patterson recorded that Quneitra was charmingly set in a grove of eucalyptus trees.

Its chief claim to charm or the few moments of a traveller's time beyond passport formalities is the beautiful vista which it offers of Jordan as it flows down from Hermon through banks of tangled bush and flowering pink and white oleanders.

Quneitra has also been the destination for many internally displaced persons (IDPs) from neighbouring Daraa and Rif Dimashq governorates.

The site of the Conversion of Paul was traditionally identified with the small village of Kokab, north-east of Quneitra, on the road to Damascus.

[18] The Ottomans encouraged Circassian settlement in the Golan as a means to drive a wedge between the frequently rebellious Druze villages of Mount Hermon and those in Jabal Hauran.

Gottlieb Schumacher wrote in 1888 that it "consists of 260 buildings, which are mostly well and carefully constructed of basalt stones, and contains, excluding the soldiers and officials, 1,300 inhabitants, principally Circassians.

Israeli forces advancing towards Quneitra from the north-west prompted Syrian troops to deploy north of the city, under heavy bombardment, to defend the road to Damascus.

But then the fall of the city was announced and that caused many of my soldiers to leave the front and run back to Syria while the roads were still open.

[36] An armoured brigade under Colonel Albert Mandler entered Quneitra at 2:30 p.m. and found the city deserted and strewn with abandoned military equipment.

[37]Time magazine reported: "In an effort to pressure the United Nations into enforcing a ceasefire, Damascus Radio undercut its own army by broadcasting the fall of the city of El Quneitra three hours before it actually capitulated.

In June 1967, Time magazine wrote that: "The city of El Quneitra was a ghost town, its shops shuttered, its deserted streets patrolled by Israelis on house-to-house searches for caches of arms and ammunition.

The hills echoed with explosions as Israeli sappers systematically destroyed the miniature Maginot line from which the Syrians had shelled kibbutzim across the Sea of Galilee.

"[38] The United Nations Special Representative, Nils-Göran Gussing, visited it in July and reported that "nearly every shop and every house seemed to have been broken into and looted" and that some buildings had been set on fire after they had been stripped.

Although Israeli spokesmen told Gussing that Quneitra had actually been looted by the withdrawing Syrians, the UN representative viewed this as unlikely given the extremely short space of time between the erroneous radio announcement and the fall of the city a few hours later.

"[37] Circassian dispersion from the Golan began after the Six-Day War, then additional numbers moved to the Caucasus after the fall of the Soviet Union.

[41] During the first few days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Quneitra was briefly recaptured by the Syrian Army before it was repulsed in an Israeli counter-offensive.

[45] According to Michael Mandelbaum, the agreement provided that the city was to be repopulated to serve as evidence of peaceful Syrian intentions, by doing so it would encourage the Israelis to pull back further.

[47]Wollner and Harel asked the Jewish National Fund to carry out the work, ostensibly to prepare an area for agricultural cultivation, but were refused as they did not have permission from the Israeli army.

"[51] Le Monde's Syria correspondent, in a report for The Times, gave a detailed eyewitness description of the destruction: Today the city is unrecognisable.

Everywhere there are fragments of furniture, discarded kitchen utensils, Hebrew newspapers dating from the first week of June; here a ripped-up mattress, there the springs of an old sofa.

[55][56][57] The Times' correspondent saw the city for himself on 6 May, a month before the Israeli withdrawal, and described it as being "in ruins and deserted after seven years of war and dereliction.

According to The Times' correspondent Edward Mortimer, "viewers were thus afforded a panoramic view of the city, which had stood almost completely empty since the Syrian army evacuated it in 1967.

The roofs lay flat on the ground, 'pancaked' in a manner which I am told can only be achieved by systematic dynamiting of the support walls inside."

[59] His report concluded that Israeli forces had deliberately destroyed the city prior to their withdrawal, including almost 4,000 buildings and a large amount of infrastructure, of value estimated at 463 million Syrian pounds.

It passed a resolution on 29 November 1974 describing the destruction of Quneitra as "a grave breach of the [Fourth] Geneva Convention" and "condemn[ing] Israel for such acts," by a margin of 93 votes to 8, with 74 abstentions.

[61] The Rough Guide to Syria describes the appearance of the city in 2001: "The first sight of the flattened houses on Quneitra's outskirts is the most dramatic; many of the unscathed roofs simply lie on top of a mass of rubble, leaving the impression of a building that has imploded.

[66][67] On 13 November 2012, during the ongoing Syrian Civil War, which had begun in March 2011, Syria′s president Bashar al-Assad issued a decreed establishment of a branch of the University of Damascus in Quneitra.