Israel not serious about withdrawal from occupied Ghajar

07 October 2011

BEIRUT: When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his country’s intention almost a year ago to withdraw its military presence from the northern section of Ghajar village, at least one observer was unconvinced.

“I didn’t believe it at the time,” says Timur Goksel, a former long-term adviser for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). “I thought it was a political move, something to make Israel seem more reasonable than it was. Israel wasn’t serious and they know this.”

After years of international pressure aimed at getting Israel to finally remove troops from the northern sector of a village it had initially occupied in the days following its 1967 war, Goksel’s skepticism – shared by many in Lebanon – was understandable, even if the U.N.’s position has remained clear.

“The issue of [Israeli] withdrawal is not a subject of negotiations,” says UNIFIL Spokesperson Neeraj Singh. “All parties have recognized and accepted that this area is Lebanese territory and our efforts are to restore full Lebanese sovereignty in this area.”

In the months following Netanyahu’s proclamation, the issue of Ghajar lingered unresolved. Finally, in February this year, it was announced that Israel was freezing its planned withdrawal, citing worries over “the safety of Ghajar residents.”

If the address by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak appeared to nix any possibility of a speedy resolution to the divided village, it was merely the latest blow to residents of Ghajar, some of whom have lived in cartographic and administrative limbo for over 40 years.

The village’s geography – described variously in pre-1967 maps as Ghajar al-Fuqa and Ghajar al-Tahta (Upper and Lower Ghajar), or Al-Ghajar and Al-Wazzani – had long been the subject of speculation, either falling entirely in Lebanese or Syrian territory, depending on whose map was deemed most authoritative.

In the days following the 1967 war, Ghajar’s predominantly Alawite villagers lobbied to be annexed to Israel, given they identified themselves as Syrian and Israel had recently occupied the Syrian Golan Heights. Indeed, after Israel’s 1978 invasion of south Lebanon, many residents opted to accept Israeli citizenship.

The division of the village, possibly due to geographic misnomers, occurred following Israel’s 2000 military withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The northern part of the village was deemed by U.N. mapmakers to be Lebanese and the southern section Israeli, the two dissected by the Blue Line. Israel reoccupied northern Ghajar during its 2006 war with Hezbollah, to the dismay of the international community. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, decreed that Israel must withdraw from northern Ghajar to south of the Blue Line.

From the U.N.’s perspective, at least, the Ghajar equation remains a simple case of military error.

A plan was formulated in 2008 to help expedite the process, in which peacekeepers would replace Israel’s military presence in northern Ghajar for an interim period. In spite of regular tripartite meetings between UNIFIL, Lebanon and Israel, little progress was made, with Israel again citing security concerns if the Lebanese Army and – by its own leap of logic – Hezbollah were allowed in the vicinity.

While current UNIFIL officials decline to detail the precise military disagreement on Ghajar, Goksel is more forthright.

“Israel wanted to leave the area but they also wanted to tell the U.N. how to act after they withdrew,” he says. “The U.N. also needs the backing of Lebanese authorities and it was told that Israel didn’t want any Lebanese Army presence [in Ghajar], apart from perhaps the odd liaison officer.”While it is true that before 2006 Hezbollah on occasion used Ghajar as a channel through which it could infiltrate Israel, Goksel argues that the military reality under Resolution 1701 belies Israel’s purported security concerns.

“Hezbollah doesn’t even have access to Ghajar or, rather, it shouldn’t be in the vicinity [under Resolution 1701],” he says.

Even the official line suggests Israel is responsible for failing to accept the U.N.’s withdrawal proposal.

“Lately, our bilateral discussions with both the parties have been focused on security arrangements to accompany the implementation of the proposal to facilitate the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area,” Singh says. “On the basis of the discussions and comments received, we have presented to both the parties a formal proposal of the security arrangements to facilitate [Israeli] withdrawal. The [Lebanese Army] has accepted our proposal but the Israelis are yet to respond.”

The hold up, according to Goksel, can be attributed to Ghajar’s transition from a primarily military issue to a political one.

“The Israeli government got involved and it’s no longer purely between two armies or between those armies and UNIFIL. Even if the [government] agrees to an Israeli withdrawal, they are making this a national issue and it’s no longer purely a matter of border control,” he says.

Ghajar, and the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory, is a key ideological platform for Hezbollah and its mantra of resistance, shared by the rest of the government. It is also, according to a recent article by an Israeli academic, seen as a key bargaining chip for Israel in currying international favor.

“An Israeli withdrawal from Ghajar would be an easy way to appease [U.S. President Barack Obama’s] administration in an otherwise strained relationship between Israel’s right-wing government and the U.S. president,” Asher Kaufman wrote for the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

In addition, given Hezbollah’s insistence on retaining arms as long as Israel occupies Lebanese land, it has been projected that any Israeli withdrawal from Ghajar – and subsequently the Shebaa Farms – would lessen the party’s legitimacy for maintaining its arsenal.

Hezbollah author Amal Saad Ghorayeb rejects this notion.

“Even Hezbollah has changed that narrative. Its arms are not solely a resistance to Israel occupation of Lebanese land; they view Israel as a perpetual threat to Lebanon and there are other reasons – such as the maritime [borders] issue – that Hezbollah will use [as a pretext to stay armed],” she says.

Ghorayeb does however concede that Israel pulling out of northern Ghajar could help it weaken Hezbollah’s resistance credentials “at least in the eyes of the new [Lebanese] opposition and certainly of the international community.”

Elias Muhanna, who runs the Lebanese political blog Qifa Nabki, concurs that strategically Israel would gain little by withdrawing from northern Ghajar.

“Even if Israel were to withdraw from Ghajar, there is still the question of the Shebaa Farms and the so-called “seven villages,” that have long been part of the public discourse surrounding the legitimacy of resistance,” he says.

The U.N. insists that any issue concerning borders is mutually resolved with assent from concerned states. Given that Lebanon and Israel are in a state of war, any bilateral agreement on Ghajar appears unlikely, Ghorayeb says.

“Any agreements between Lebanon and Israel have always come through the balance of power, and it has been Hezbollah imposing its conditions on Israel, as in 2006. The Lebanese state has never negotiated anything directly with Israel because it is the weaker party,” she argues. “This is something that requires Israel to act unilaterally, as they did [in their military withdrawal from southern Lebanon] in 2000, without any preconditions. Anything less than that would be unacceptable.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.