07 July 2006
The Shebaa Farms issue is not geographic in nature; it does not relate to the ownership of territory. It is not even a question of who has the right to exercise sovereignty over that remote and barren piece of land straddling the Lebanese-Syrian border. Rather, it is a highly complicated political matter that goes beyond implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions 425 and 1559.
We may retrace the origins of the Shebaa Farms imbroglio to the fall of 1999, when Israeli forces began their preparations for a unilateral withdrawal from South Lebanon. Syria did not welcome the Israeli pullback, fearing that such a development would deprive it of a valuable bargaining chip provided by the continuation of costly attacks by Hizbullah that did not risk the outbreak of a larger war with Israel. At the time, Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss claimed that there were seven villages occupied by Israel since 1949 that rightfully belonged to Lebanon, and that their recovery remained "a Lebanese demand." Then, in April 2000, the Lebanese government told UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen that, in addition to the area occupied in 1978, Israeli forces had seized a piece of land known as the Shebaa Farms, a 25-square-kilometer area.
In reality, the ownership of the Shebaa Farms was disputed between Lebanon and Syria in 1951. Based on a document presented by Lebanese historian Issam Khalife, the Syrians had then agreed that the area was Lebanese. However, this boundary was not demarcated at the time. On May 22, 2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan rebuffed the Lebanese and Syrian claims concerning the farms in his report to the Security Council. The Shebaa Farms, a remote and unpopulated area, became a substitute for the return of the seven villages, because the latter claim could not withstand legal examination and if pursued by military means would have exposed Lebanese villagers along the border to Israeli reprisals.
Since Hizbullah's first attack in October 2000, there have been serious discussions in Lebanon concerning the ownership of the area and the relative merits of military resistance versus sustained diplomacy. The Lebanese public tends to support a diplomatic option, now that ownership of the farms has been settled in the so-called national dialogue meetings. Although Syrian President Bashar Assad and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa have declared the farms to be Lebanese, the border demarcation process seems to have been frozen by the Syrian authorities.
As long as it isn't recognized internationally as Lebanese territory, the Shebaa Farms area will be considered a territorial dispute between Lebanon and Syria rather than between Lebanon and Israel. However, in the regional context the issue represents the tip of an iceberg. Hizbullah's links to Iran and Syria make the relinquishing of its weapons a complicated matter that must be addressed in the context of what is going on between the United States, Iran and Syria. All indications are that Hizbullah will continue to resist internal and international calls for it to disarm and switch to an exclusively political agenda.
The position of the Lebanese government is to accommodate the international community's calls to implement Resolution 1559. A sense of urgency has led Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to seek solutions in Washington and New York for the Shebaa Farms issue, and to look for a national consensus on disarming Hizbullah through the national dialogue forum. Within this wide internal discussion, several proposals concerning Hizbullah's weapons have been advanced.
First, a diplomatic solution asking Syria to implement Resolution 1680 and demarcate the boundaries of the Shebaa Farms; and asking Israel to withdraw from the area in exchange for a Hizbullah pullback and turnover of its rockets to the Lebanese Army, which would deploy along the border.
Second, incorporation of Hizbullah fighters into the army, with guarantees provided by the United States that Israel would cease to violate Lebanon's sovereignty and threaten its security. This could be accompanied by a possible increase in the size of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.
Third, incorporation of Hizbullah as a separate paramilitary unit, based on the 1958 Al-Ansar Law, which would be placed under army command.
Until now, Hizbullah has accepted none of the proposals. On the contrary, it has mobilized in favor of a defense strategy wherein the Islamic resistance would be a deterrent force against Israel, while the Lebanese Army would play a supportive role.
Despite attempts by Hizbullah to mobilize popular support for the liberation of the Shebaa Farms, the Lebanese public is unenthusiastic. Few consider the farms worth fighting for. Hizbullah is today caught in an extremely uncomfortable situation between its national obligations and its allegiances to Syria and Iran.
The weakness of internal equilibrium in Lebanon requires that the Siniora government stop short of compelling Hizbullah to disarm and withdraw its militia from the border area. But the government, in the meantime, cannot sit and wait until the regional context provides favorable conditions for a diplomatic solution to the Shebaa Farms problem. It is imperative that the government work urgently to develop its security and defense forces, mobilize public opinion in favor of a national consensus on the future of the Shebaa Farms, and lay down the principles for securing its sovereignty as an indivisible aspect of the national dialogue.
Nizar Abdel-Kader is a political analyst and columnist at Ad-Diyar newspaper in Lebanon. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
