12 December 2009

BEIRUT: Residents of the divided village of Ghajar staged large-scale protests on Friday following speculation that Israel was planning to withdraw troops from the occupied northern sector.

Village spokesman Najib Khatib said that the vast majority of the village’s 2,200 residents took part in the protest.

Although the village is closed to outsiders by the Israeli Army, residents could be heard to chant their support for a unified Ghajar.

“They will divide our people, cut families in two,” the villagers sang.

Reports from near the Blue Line – the UN-demarcated boundary of Israeli military withdrawal from Lebanon – said that around 500 residents gathered in the village’s main square with a letter addressed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon protesting any potential division, although these could not be confirmed.

Israel took over Ghajar in 1967 when it annexed the Syrian Golan Heights. Its soldiers withdrew when it pulled out of south Lebanon in 2000, but reoccupied the northern part of the village in July 2006. The village still straddles the Blue Line which, when demarcated in 2000, placed the northern sector in Lebanese territory.

The UN demands that Israel hand back the village’s northern sector, in accordance with Security Council resolutions.

UNIFIL has put forward a proposal which would see Israeli troops withdraw to south of the Blue Line and be replaced by international peacekeepers.

Although Ghajar’s residents carry Israeli identification cards, Khatib was adamant as to villagers’ nationality.

“Our village’s identity is Syrian. Its fate is linked to the Golan Heights,” he said and added that Ghajar had no connection with Lebanon.

“We would be like refugees in Lebanon.”

Friday’s protest followed a tripartite meeting this week in which the fate of the northern part of the village was discussed by Lebanese and Israeli Army representatives, under the mediation of the force commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Major General Claudio Graziano.

Graziano has been credited with drafting a workable plan for Israeli withdrawal, but no concrete action has been agreed between UNIFIL and Tel Aviv.

Reports have repeatedly surfaced of Israeli ministers preparing to authorize a withdrawal of troops from Ghajar’s northern sector. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met with his Italian counterpart on Wednesday but indicated that any withdrawal depended on the Lebanese government.

According to Resolution 1701, Israel is obliged to withdraw from the northern part of Ghajar and although plans have existed concerning the fate of the village for many months, UNIFIL is yet to receive official confirmation of Tel Aviv’s position, a force spokesman told The Daily Star on Friday.

Syria has said Israel must return the Golan Heights, in which Ghajar is situated, as part of any comprehensive Middle East deal.

Residents made it clear on Friday that they would not allow any agreement to partition their village.

“The implication of division is splitting families and people that have always lived together,” Khatib was quoted as saying by Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth. “The implication is blocking the residents from their land. We are not willing to build a wall in the middle of the village. The Berlin Wall was already taken down, and there will not be another wall like that here.”

Also on Friday, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israeli Army held military drills which simulated “various combat scenarios against Syria and Hizbullah.”

One drill using live ammunitions took place in the occupied Golan Heights region, involving tanks and Israeli Air Force combat aircraft, the paper added. – With AFP

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.