Washington is urging the Lebanese government to pressure Hezbollah into removing an outpost erected in the occupied Shebaa Farms, Israeli media reported on 29 June.
Walla news outlet cited anonymous Israeli and US officials as saying that the outpost represents a “miscalculation on Hezbollah’s part, which does not take into account the potential Israeli response. Therefore, this incident has the potential for serious escalation.”
“Our goal is for the outpost not to be there. We prefer Hezbollah evacuate its people itself over us bombing them. We have made this clear to the US, and the Americans made it clear to the Lebanese,” the report cites an Israeli official as saying.
According to Walla, Hezbollah began erecting the first tent in April. The Israeli army reportedly did not realize this until a second tent had been set up.
Israel tried to handle the situation “under the radar in quiet talks” with UNIFIL for weeks.
Other Israeli media outlets say Tel Aviv set a deadline to remove the tents, and that it would deal with the resistance group “on its own,” sparking fears of a wider confrontation.
Beirut has acknowledged that the outpost is south of the UN-recognized Blue Line, separating Lebanese and Israeli territories.
On 21 June, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN wrote in a letter to the Security Council: “The media blows out of proportion minor events such as the setting up of a small tent in the Shebaa Farms south of the Blue Line, while the root of the problem is the ongoing Israeli violations.”
His comments refer to a border wall that Israel has been building since 2018. The Israeli army has also been conducting engineering work on the border, violating Lebanese sovereignty.
The Hezbollah outpost lies in the territory occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. It was set up in response to the illegal border excavations and engineering works carried out by Israel.
Last week, Lebanese media reported that tensions on the border in early June, which prompted widespread Lebanese protests and deployment of the Lebanese and Israeli armies to the border, was an attempt by Israel to remove these posts.
Hezbollah has so far rejected demands to remove these tents from the occupied Shebaa Farms, which were part of Syrian Golan Heights which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war.
The Syrian regime which is allied with Hezbollah reportedly claims that the Shebaa farms are Lebanese in order to justify Hezbollah’s resistance role , but on the other hand it refuses to provide Lebanon with the documents that were demanded by the UN to show Lebanon’s ownership .
At the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990 all the militias were forced to hand over their arms to the Lebanese army , but Syria which was occupying Lebanon during that period allowed Hezbollah to keep its illegal arms . Hezbollah today is reportedly stronger than the Lebanese army
The Cradle
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