Hezbollah evacuates one of its 2 tents on Shebaa border with Israel

The move comes after Israel threatened Hezbollah with armed conflict if it does not move quickly its tents from inside its border near Shebaa

Hezbollah has removed one of two tents set up in an area along the Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel, according to several Hebrew-language reports late Sunday evening.

According to the Ynet news site, the same number of Hezbollah fighters remains on the Israeli side of the contested area, but they have now been condensed into the remaining tent, while the second one was moved to the Lebanese side.

An Israeli news site reported that Israeli officials believe Hezbollah is seeking to quietly avoid an armed confrontation with Israel by moving the tent. Israeli officials did not immediately confirm the reports on Sunday evening.

The move comes hours after Israel reportedly sent a message to Hezbollah threatening an armed confrontation if it did not remove the tents soon. According to one report, Israel warned Hezbollah that the tents would be removed “even at the cost of days of fighting.”

The Hezbollah tents were set up in early April on the Israeli side of the internationally recognized Blue Line in the contested Shebaa Farms area .

Israel has reportedly been making diplomatic efforts behind the scenes since April to get the tents and operatives removed peacefully, but Hezbollah refused.

Energy Minister Israel Katz told a radio station :

“The easiest thing is to hit the ‘war’ button. We’re not interested in going there, but we won’t allow our red lines to be crossed, and Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah should know that. He warned that if a war erupts over this matter it will be of a severity nothing like the 2006 war .

An excuse for Hezbollah to keep its arms

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 .

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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