Shebaa Farms

Map of the Shebaa Farms.

The Shebaa Farms (Arabic: مزارع شبعا, Template:ArabDIN; Hebrew: חוות שבעא, Havot Sheba'a) is a small area of disputed ownership located at the junction of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The area is located between the Lebanese village of Shebaa on the northwestern slopes of Mount Hermon, the Druze village of Majdal Shams on the slopes of the Golan Heights (about 7 kilometers (4 miles) away), and Israeli towns and settlements that it overlooks below, such as Qiryat Shemona.

The area is 14 km (9 miles) in length, and averages 2.5 km (2 miles) in width, coming to about 25 square km (10 square miles). Altitudes range from 150 to 1,880 meters (490–6,170 feet).

Summary of the current dispute

The area referred to as 'Shebaa Farms' was captured by Israel from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967, which did not involve Lebanon. Israel considers the Shebaa Farms to be part of the Golan Heights, and extended Israeli law to the region in 1981, in an action that the Security Council declared to be 'null and void and without international legal effect' in UN SCR 497. The controversy over the Farms first arose in 2000, as the United Nations certified that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon was complete. Israel's annexation of the Shebaa Farms has been contested by Hezbollah (since May 2000), and trumpeted as a reason for its continued attacks on Israel after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. On a fact-finding visit to the region Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, cast doubt on the validity of the assertion that the Shebaa Farms were Lebanese territory seized by Israel during the 1967 war, pointing out that Lebanon was not a party to the 1967 war and that the 1923 Anglo-French demarcation and the 1949 Armistice line clearly designated the area as Syrian territory.

Members of the international diplomatic community have repeatedly requested that Syria and Lebanon take steps to determine the exact boundary between them in the Shebaa Farms region and elsewhere, including officially registering the demarcated border with the United Nations. President Assad of Syria has refused, however, to do so until Israeli troops withdraw.

Background (1923-2000)

The French Mandate through the Six Day War (1923–67)

The dispute over the sovereignty of the Shebaa Farms resulted in part from the failure of the French Mandate administrations, and subsequently the Lebanese and Syrian governments, to properly demarcate the border between Lebanon and Syria, though there is a long history of the area having been designated as Syrian by France, Lebanon, and Syria from 1923 onward.

In the 1923 Anglo-French Demarcation Agreement, which set the borders between the British and French mandates in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, the area was included in Syria.

Documents from the 1920s and 1930s indicate that some local inhabitants, however, regarded themselves as part of Lebanon, for example paying taxes to the Lebanese government. But French officials at times expressed confusion as to the actual location of the border. One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future.

The region continued to be represented in the 1930s and 1940s as Syrian territory, under the French Mandate. Detailed maps showing the border were produced by the French in 1933, and again in 1945. They clearly showed the region to be in Syria.

Following France's exit from the region, the land was administered by Syria, and represented as such in all maps of the time. But a commission responsible for demarcating the border in the decades after the French Mandate ended in 1946 did not act decisively to delimit or demarcate the area.

The maps of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Syria and Israel also designated the area as Syrian.

Border disputes arose at times, however. Shebaa Farms was not unique; several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership. Syria and Lebanon formed a joint Syrian-Lebanese border committee in the late 1950s to determine a proper border between the two nations. In 1964, concluding its work, the committee suggested to the two governments that the area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion. However, neither Syria nor Lebanon adopted the committee's suggestion, and neither country took any action along the suggested lines. Thus, maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria. Even maps of both the Syrian and Lebanese armies continued to demarcate the region within Syrian territory.

File:Shebaafarms.png

A Lebanese military map, published in 1966, showing the Shebaa Farms as being on the Syrian side of the border.

A number of local residents regarded themselves as Lebanese, however. The Lebanese government showed little interest in their views. The Syrian government administered the region, and on the eve of the 1967 war, the region was under effective Syrian control.

In 1967 most Shebaa Farms landowners and farmers (Lebanese) lived outside the Syrian-controlled region, across the Lebanon-Syrian border, in the Lebanese village of Shebaa. During the Six Day War, Israel captured the Farms from Syria. After Syria lost the land (to the Israelis) in 1967, the Lebanese landowners were no longer able to farm it.

UN Resolution 242 (1967)

In 1967, following the termination of the Six Day War, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 (1967), later reaffirmed by UN Security Council Resolution 338 (1973), calling for all four of the following:

1. The "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Some dispute whether the language requires withdrawal from "all" occupied territories. The drafting process was in English, and the version of the text that was voted on was the English text. The UN practice is that the binding version of any resolution is the one voted upon. (See statement by Arthur Goldberg, US Ambassador to the United Nations at that time, and an author of the Resolution: "The notable omissions in regard to withdrawal... are the words 'all,' 'the' and 'the June 5, 1967 lines'... There is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from all of the territories occupied by it on, and after, June 5, 1967... On certain aspects, the Resolution is less ambiguous than its withdrawal language. Resolution 242 (1967) specifically calls for termination of all claims or states of belligerency..." (Columbia Journal of International Law, Vol. 12, no. 2, 1973)). Still, an innacurate translation in the French text, which was supposed to be a translation of the authoritative English text, has spawned some contoversy. The French text uses "des territoires occupés," meaning "from the occupied territories." The authoritative English text deliberately omits "the." In any event, the UN regards Shebaa Farms as Syrian territory occupied by Israel, not Lebanese territory subject to Resolution 242.
2. The recognition by Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan of each other.
3. The termination of all claims or states of belligerency.
4. The establishment of defensible boundaries for all parties.

All of the involved states, arguably, have failed to satisfy one or more of the four cornerstones of the resolution.

In 1981, the area was officially annexed by Israel, as part of the Golan Heights. This unilateral annexation is not recognised by the UN or international community.

Coastal Road massacre, Operation Litani, and UN Resolution 425 (1978–2000)

From 1968, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) established a quasi-state in southern Lebanon. On March 11, 1978, PLO members infiltrated Israel from Lebanon, and killed 37 Israeli civilians riding in a bus in the Tel Aviv area, as well as an American nature photographer on an Israeli beach. In addition, they injured 76 Israelis. See Coastal Road massacre. The attack was the most deadly in a string of attacks that the PLO had launched from Lebanon. It triggered Israel's Operation Litani against PLO bases in southern Lebanon three days later.

Five days after Operation Litani began, UN Security Council Resolution 425 (1978) called upon Israel to: "withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory." The phrase "all territory" was used in Resolution 425, contrasting with the language in Resolution 242 (1967).

On May 22, 2000, Israel completed its withdrawal from the southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. The UN certified the completion of Israel's pullout.

The current dispute

Lebanon's claim

The disputed territory was not mentioned by the Lebanese government after the 1967 Six Day War, or the 1973 October War, as an occupation issue.

In 2000, in what appears to be the Lebanese government's first claim to the territory, Lebanon disputed Israel's compliance with UN Resolution 425 (1978). Lebanon claimed that the Shebaa Farms area was actually Lebanese, and demanded that the Israelis should therefore withdraw from there as well. Lebanon asserted that the UN certification of the Israeli withdrawal was "invalid," because of Lebanon's claim to the Farms.

Lebanese officials point to land deeds, stamped by the Lebanese government, that were held by a number of area residents in the 1940s and 1950s.

The new Lebanese claim to this area is one reason now asserted by Hezbollah for its continuing conflict with Israel, and its cross-border attacks after the Israeli withdrawal. However, Hezbollah's spokesperson Hassan Ezzedin had this to say about the Farms: "If they go from Sheba'a, we will not stop fighting them. Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine...[Jews] can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.”

And Lebanese area residents, who are Sunnis, don't believe that Shiite Hezbollah's real goal is to free the last few kilometres of 'Lebanese' land.

Lebanese opposition leader Walid Jumblatt has stated that Lebanon has no valid claim to the Sheba farms area.

On 28 August 2006, Hezbollah fighters withdrew from positions facing Israeli lines in the Shebaa Farms area.

Lebanese media reaction

A Lebanese newspaper, however, described the land deed of one Shebaa resident as "handwritten and signed on a yellowing piece of paper in pencil and ink." Moreover, it is quite common for Lebanese to own land in Syria, and vice versa.

According to another Lebanese newspaper, Dar Al-Hayat, most Lebanese, in fact, had never heard or read about the Farms, even in their national school curricula. [23] "The issue over these farms was created to justify resistance operations from Lebanon after the UN had created the Blue Line following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. The Shebaa farms were placed inside Syrian territory. It should be noted that Syria, which claims that the farms are Lebanese, has not presented a single document to the UN to prove it. More than that, Syria refuses to demarcate its borders with Lebanon."[24]

In fact, on February 13, 2006, a Beirut Times article reported that Walid Jumblatt, Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon and Lebanese parliament member, displayed the map as a "fake map," with the boundary shifted.

All period maps save one, an apparent forgery, show the land as being on the Syrian side of the border. In contrast to this forged 1966 map, submitted to the UN in 2000, all published maps showed the area to be within Syria. Lebanese army maps published in 1961 and 1966 clearly show the Shebaa Farms area (including Zebdine, Fashkoul, Mougr Shebaa, and Ramta) as being on the Syrian side of the border. All known Syrian maps, and all known Lebanese Ministry of Tourism maps, also show the Lebanese-Syrian border running west of the Shebaa Farms, which would place Shebaa Farms to the east of the border and therefore within Syria.

Syrian position

Syria has at times supported Lebanon's claim that the Shebaa Farms are part of Lebanon and not Syrian territory at the UN and in official government press releases. But at times it has made contrary statements.

In August 1972, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad said, "Syria and Lebanon are a single country." Syria does not maintain an embassy in Beirut, which would indicate recognition of Lebanese independence. Similarly, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University, Daniel Pipes (Editor of Middle East Quarterly), and others have written about Syria's failure to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon. In addition, Lebanon does not appear as an independent state in maps in Syrian textbooks -- but rather as part of Greater Syria. The Shebaa Farms also appear as part of Syria on the large-scale map on the Syrian Ministry of Tourism's website.

In 2002 Israeli officials noted that Syria treated the area as its own over the years. They pointed to the fact, for example, that a Syrian census in 1960 included the residents of the Farms.

On May 16, 2000, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouq al-Shara, indicated to Annan in a telephone conversation that Syria supported Lebanon's claim. This was made public in the UN Press Release SC/6878 of 18 June 2000 which stated 'Concerning the Shab'a farmlands, both Lebanon and Syria state that this land belongs to Lebanon.'

Support for the Lebanese claim was reiterated in January 21, 2006, by the President of Syria in a speech before the convention of the Arab Lawyers Union in Damascus and translated into English by SANA, the official state news agency of Syria. President Bashar al-Assad stated that there are two legal requirements for demarcating the border: first, the complaint must be registered with the UN; and second, engineers must precisely define the border. As neither Syria nor Lebanon have access to the area, Assad argues that resolution is waiting on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory. Nevertheless, so far Israel has not idicated that it would refuse to allow an official Lebanese, Syrian or international contingent to enter the Shebaa Farms territory in order to demarcate the border, were an official request to do so be made at some point.

On August 15, 2006, however, Syria said it would not object to the deployment in Shabaa of UNIFIL soldiers, but would not allow the Lebanese Army to patrol or set up positions there. [25]

In an interview with Assad reported by SANA on August 24, 2006, Assad flatly refused demarcation of the Syrian/Lebanese border near Shebaa Farms before a withdrawal of Israeli troops. [26]

UN position

The United Nations agreed with Israel that the area is not covered by United Nations UN Security Council Resolution 425, which governed the withdrawal from Lebanon, inasmuch as the Farms are not Lebanese territory, and the UN certified Israel's pullout. At the same time the UN noted that its decision was "without prejudice to future border agreements between the Member States concerned," referring to Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.

The UN stated: "On 15 May 2000, the United Nations received a map, dated 1966, from the Government of Lebanon which reflected the Government's position that these farmlands were located in Lebanon. However, the United Nations is in possession of 10 other maps issued after 1966 by various Lebanese government institutions, including the Ministry of Defense and the army, all of which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations has also examined six maps issued by the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, including three maps since 1966, which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic."

In a June 18, 2000 statement, the Security Council noted that Israel and Lebanon had confirmed to the Secretary General, that identification of the withdrawal line was solely the responsibility of the UN and that both sides would respect the line as identified. Moreover, the Security Council took note, "with serious concern," of reports of violations - by Hezbollah - that had occurred since June 16, 2000, and called upon the parties to respect the line drawn by the United Nations.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in remarks to the press with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Minister of Spain Josep Pique, Foreign Minister of Russia Igor Ivanov, and European Union Senior Official Javier Solana in Madrid, Spain, on April 10, 2002, said: "With reference to the disturbances along the Blue Line emanating from Lebanese territory, I call on the Government of Lebanon and all relevant parties to condemn and prevent such violations. The Security Council itself confirmed in June 2000 that Israel had withdrawn from southern Lebanon in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions 425 and 426. Attacks at any point along the Blue Line, including in the Shebaa Farms area in the occupied Golan Heights, are violations of Security Council resolutions. Respect for decisions of the Security Council is the most basic requirement of international legitimacy."

More recently, the January 20, 2005 UN Secretary-General's report on Lebanon stated rather emphatically: "The continually asserted position of the Government of Lebanon that the Blue Line is not valid in the Shab'a farms area is not compatible with Security Council resolutions. The Council has recognized the Blue Line as valid for purposes of confirming Israel’s withdrawal pursuant to resolution 425 (1978). The Government of Lebanon should heed the Council’s repeated calls for the parties to respect the Blue Line in its entirety." Timur Goksel, a spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told the BBC that: "on all maps the UN has been able to find, the farms are seen on the Syrian side [of the border]."

On May 19, 2005, an off-the-record discussion with an unnamed senior diplomat from an unidentified country at the Washington DC-based Brookings Institution luncheon reported that: "in drawing the 'Blue Line' in 2000, the United Nations looked at more than ninety different maps of the region. Only one of them — which was deemed a forgery — showed the Shebaa Farms as Lebanese."

Israeli position

Israel's position is that the area is not covered by United Nations UN Security Council Resolution 425, which governed Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, inasmuch as the Farms were not Lebanese territory. In support of that view, Israel points to the fact that the UN certified Israel's pullout from Lebanon as having been completed. Israel is of the view that the land was Syrian at the time that Israel conquered it during the Six Day War.

US position

Along similar lines, John Bolton, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, said on April 26, 2006: "I think the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence is that Shebaa Farms is Syrian territory."

Nancy Soderberg, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, made a similar observation on July 21, 2006. She wrote that: "When it was clear the Israelis were going to withdraw fully from Lebanon, Syrian and Lebanese officials fabricated the fiction that this small, sparsely populated area was part of Lebanon. They even produced a crudely fabricated map to back up the dubious claim. I and United Nations officials went into the map room in the United Nations and looked at all the maps of the region in the files for decades. All showed the Shebaa Farms clearly in Syria."

Other reactions

The Arab League backed Lebanon's claim with a communique issued at Arab League's 13th session in 2001, asking for "complete Israeli withdrawal from ... Lebanese lands still under occupation, to internationally recognised borders, including the Shebaa Farms."

In 2002, a fellow from the Harry S. Truman Research Instititute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Asher Kaufman, came across documents in French government archives while researching the issue. In one, French litigants in a private dispute, and their arbitrators, entered into a private commercial agreement that suggested that the border should put the Farms in Lebanon. Two other documents, from 1937 and 1939, were reports from the administrative councillor of south Lebanon and the head of the Services Speciaux in the Syrian town of Quneitra. They noted a discrepancy between the border, as determined by the 1:200,000 Ottoman map, and their view of the "reality" in the region. Collecting "unofficial information" from "various sources," they concluded that in their view the area was Lebanese. Their conclusion, however, was based on the facts that: a) some area residents paid taxes to Lebanon; and b) 3 or 4 sheep pens in the Farms belonged to residents of the Lebanese village of Shaba. After Kaufman published his findings, an editorial in the Lebanese newspaper "the Daily Star" chided the Lebanese academic community, indicating that it was embarrassing that the discovery had been left to an Israeli researcher.

Former US president Jimmy Carter suggested in the Washington Post on August 1, 2006, that: "Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms."

Former Vice President of Syria Abdel-Halim Khaddam, in an interview with the Lebanese Future Television on August 27, 2006, speaking of Syria's most recent comments regarding Shebaa Farms, said: "Saying that the farms are occupied, and hence cannot be demarcated, is nothing but a pretext. The demarcation would not take more than an hour if there was a political will."[27]

External links

• Bregman, Ahron (2002). Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415287162
• Shebaa Farms (5/25/000) BBC News
• Security Council endorses Secretary-General's conclusion on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as of 16 June (6/18/00) UN
• Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon given UN's endorsement (6/19/00) Telegraph
• Thin Blue Line (6/23/00) Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz
• Fighting erupts over Shebaa Farms (4/14/01) BBC
• Syria and the Shebaa Farms Dispute (5/01) with map) Middle East Intelligence Bulletin
• Where is Shaaba Farms and why is there fighting over it? Palestine Facts
• The key to Shebaa (4/25/05) Al Jazeera
• Hezbollah to drop arms if Israel quits Shebaa (9/4/05) Ha'aretz
• Shebaa farm history polemic (10/3/05) Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council
• CIA World Factbook entry for Lebanon, referencing the dispute CIA
• The Truth About the Sheba Farms, Sami Moubayed, World Politics Watch