MIDEAST: Residents of Ghajar fear for their status in Lebanon, as Israel prepares to withdraw from the divided village

Record ID: 396859

  • Title: MIDEAST: Residents of Ghajar fear for their status in Lebanon, as Israel prepares to withdraw from the divided village
  • Date: 18th November 2010
  • Summary: OUTSIDE GHAJAR VILLAGE, GOLAN HEIGHTS (NOVEMBER 17, 2010) (REUTERS) SIGN READING: 'NO ENTRY CLOSED MILITARY AREA' VARIOUS OF VILLAGE LOCATED ON THE BORDER BETWEEN ISRAEL AND LEBANON JERUSALEM (NOVEMBER 17, 2010) (REUTERS) ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN MARK REGEV WALKING REGEV TALKING TO REPORTER (SOUNDBITE) (English) MARK REGEV, SPOKESPERSON FOR ISRAELI GOVERNMENT,
  • Embargoed: 3rd December 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVADK8F4GXRKWPPP7NEFHQOK4868
  • Story Text: The Israeli government on Wednesday (November 17) approved a plan to withdraw its troops from part of a village on the Lebanese border occupied in 1967, that has long inflamed tensions with Hezbollah and neighbouring Syria.
    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 15-member security cabinet passed the northern Ghajar pullout in a vote but did not set a date. Israeli officials said that would await talks with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon about securing the vacated area.
    "This morning Israel's security cabinet took a decision in principal to accept the proposals by the United Nations to pull out our forces from the northern parts of Ghajar. By doing so we are implementing our obligations under UN Security Council resolution 1701, we will be dealing now with the UN to work out the particulars of this pullout but that will be happening over the coming weeks," Israeli Government Spokesman Mark Regev said.
    Israel captured Ghajar, along with the Golan Heights which it abuts, from Syria in the 1967 war. The villagers, who profess allegiance to Damascus, took Israeli citizenship in 1981.
    In 2000, U.N. cartographers placed the northern part of Ghajar in Lebanon as Israel dismantled a 22-year-old military occupation zone there. Israel re-took northern Ghajar in its 2006 war with Hezbollah, saying the village offered a porous conduit for guerrilla attacks and drug smuggling from Lebanon.
    Hezbollah, an ally of Syria and Iran, is liege of south Lebanon and now a powerful player in Beirut. Resisting calls to disarm, it has cited the Israeli troops in Ghajar as evidence of a continued occupation of Lebanese soil that must be fought.
    U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams said in August following a clash at another point along the 120 kilometre (75 mile) border that an Israeli withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar "would do a lot to help restore trust".
    Villagers have frowned on the idea of being bisected by Israel and Lebanon, countries with which they do not fully identify.
    "We don't want to become refugees on the Lebanese side without our lands that were occupied in 1967, without our people our families (on the other side). So we are against this plan and we do not allow that we get broken up and for us to be refugees on the Lebanese side without our lands and brothers. In 1967 we refused to be refugees on the Lebanese side or in any other side and we said to side here is better for us than to be refugees elsewhere," Ghajar spokesman Najib Khatib told Reuters.
    Khatib told Reuters that 12,000 dunums (3000 acres) of village land falls inside what is today called Israel proper and was sold off by the state of Israel.
    "The village is Syrian and was occupied in 1967, it is a part of the Golan," Khatib said.
    "We don't have any problems, and I say this again for the thousanth time, we do not have any objections to return the village north and south, a village that is one entity with its lands from the north and south, to be returned to Lebanon temporarily is something we don't have a problem with, but we will not become refugees in Lebanon," he said.
    Technically at war, Israel and Syria have held indirect peace talks over the past two decades with little progress.
    Israel, which annexed the Golan in a move not recognised abroad, has refused Damascus's call for a promise to return the strategic turf. Syria has rebuffed Israel's demand it distance itself from Iran, Hezbollah, and Palestinian militant groups.
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