Mohammad Raad, head of the Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc , announced Saturday that Hezbollah would not be removing its two tents which are placed on the borders of Shebaa farms , according to Lebanese media.
Israel says that Hezbollah’s fighters have been manning the two tents and claims that they are placed on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, the ceasefire line and border with Lebanon, which was established after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000.
The Shebaa area was part of the Syrian Golan Heights before the 1967 Six Day War, and had Israeli law extended to it along with the rest of the Golan Heights, in 1981.
The Israeli government had preferred that the dispute be handled diplomatically by the UN in order to avoid escalation in the northern sector, so it had asked the UN and the US to apply pressure on Lebanon and also Hezbollah to remove the tents.
According to Israeli media reports , if Hezbollah refuses to evacuate the two tents , the Israeli army will itself take the initiative to evacuate them by force.
Beirut has acknowledged that the tents are placed 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.
Last week, Lebanese media reported that tensions on the border in early June, prompted protests and deployment of the Lebanese and Israeli armies to the border .
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 .
An excuse for Hezbollah to keep its arms
Former leader of the Progressive Socialist party Walid Jumblatt caused a stir in 2019 when he told Russia Today that the occupied Shebaa farms are not Lebanese but Syrian.
Jumblatt claimed that after the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, Lebanese officers, with the help of Syrian officers, altered maps of the area.
The aim was to “maintain a reason for Syrians and non-Syrians to free the Shebaa farms however they can”, said Jumblatt, indirectly attacking Hezbollah’s claim to liberate Lebanese land from Israel.
This argument allows Hezbollah’s militias to continue bearing weapons, even though all other armed groups were disarmed when the civil war ended in 1990.
News Agencies
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