SOUTH LEBANON/JERUSALEM: Israel to hand over Lebanon border village to UNIFEL

Record ID: 791268

  • Title: SOUTH LEBANON/JERUSALEM: Israel to hand over Lebanon border village to UNIFEL
  • Date: 4th December 2006
  • Summary: ++GHAJAR VILLAGE NIGHT SHOTS++ PAN RIGHT OF GHAJAR VILLAGE CAR DRIVING BY TOWARDS GHAJAR VILLAGE VARIOUS OF GHAJAR VILLAGE VARIOUS OF FENCE SEPARATING THE VILLAGE
  • Embargoed: 19th December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAA2HUG4CFQ515YHLJEF8PCE19M
  • Story Text: Israel decided on Sunday (December 3) to hand over to U.N. (United Nations) peacekeepers responsibility for a village on the Lebanese border, government officials said, a step that would lead to completion of an Israeli pullout from Lebanon.
    Nearly all Israeli forces in southern Lebanon withdrew in October, two months after a 34-day war against Hezbollah guerrillas ended in a truce.
    But Israeli soldiers remained in the divided village of Ghajar with the declared aim of stopping smuggling and infiltration. The village straddles the border between Lebanon and land Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
    UNIFIL, a peacekeeping force monitoring the ceasefire, has said Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon would be complete once Israeli troops left the northern part of Ghajar.
    Israel's security cabinet, which brings together top ministers and sometimes draws on senior army commanders, voted unanimously to transfer control of Ghajar to UNIFIL, the sources said.
    "Well we have been helping the legitimate government of Lebanon with Prime Minister of Mr. Siniora. And we have been helping them as much as we can. As you know we have been applying the resolution with the forces on the ground and mainly from the European Union. And I would like to insist once again the manner in which Prime Minister Siniora is acting with tremendous dignity and corresponds to somebody who has been elected and he's the constitutional Prime Minister, and we are going to support him," said European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana in Jerusalem.
    There was no immediate announcement of a date for the move.
    Senior Israeli officials hope the pullback from Ghajar can shore up the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, whose government is under pressure from Hezbollah.
    With UNIFIL in charge of the village, Israeli troops would withdraw and fence off the community from the south, Israel's Channel Two television said on Saturday (December 2).
    That would leave the several hundred Druze Muslims who live on the Israeli side of the town and carry Israeli identification papers under U.N. protection and essentially residing on Lebanese soil.
    A pullout could also open a broader debate about the surrounding Sheeba Farms, a stretch of territory controlled by Israel that Lebanon claims as its own but which the United Nations recognises as belonging to Syria.
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