U.N. Envoy Rejects Lebanese Claim to Farming Area Held by Israelis

Lebanon’s recently voiced territorial claim to a small agricultural area near the Golan Heights does not appear to hold water, based on a review of about 80 international maps and United Nations documents, the U.N. envoy to the Middle East said Friday.

The conclusion means that the U.N. will not be backing Lebanon’s contention that Israel must leave the Shabaa Farms area in order to be fully in compliance with Security Council Resolution 425, which demanded that Israel end its occupation of Lebanon.

Citing the controversy over Shabaa Farms, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has threatened to continue his guerrilla movement’s resistance against Israel even though the Jewish state this week ended its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon.

Speaking at a news conference while his cartographers and surveyors already were out measuring the exact location of the border, U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen showed little sympathy for the Shabaa Farms claim being floated by Hezbollah and the Lebanese government.

He said that even the majority of Lebanese sources examined by the U.N.--such as maps and textbooks--fail to show that the area is part of Lebanon. Rather, the weight of the evidence shows that it is part of Syria captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

Most convincing for the U.N., however, is that the area was never part of the mandate for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, created in 1978 to facilitate an Israeli withdrawal. Even back then, all the parties in the region assumed that Shabaa Farms was part of Syria and was in the operational area of the U.N. force for Syria.

Roed-Larsen said Syria and Lebanon are free to redefine their international border whenever and however they want, but at least for now the United Nations does not think that Shabaa Farms has any relevance to the discussion over whether Israel has pulled out of Lebanon.

Roed-Larsen held talks with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Thursday and told the news conference that Lebanon has said it will abide by the U.N.’s ruling. Roed-Larsen said he expects the same cooperation from “nongovernmental organizations,” a reference to Hezbollah.

But Hezbollah repeated the land claim Friday, and its opinion appears to have gained ground in recent weeks with ordinary Lebanese citizens.

“It’s ours. We want it back, and we’re going to get it back. And that’s final!” said Mohammed Abu Ali, a civil engineer from the town of Nabatiyeh, interviewed at a victory party organized by Hezbollah in the village of Bint Jbeil, part of the 9-mile-deep zone of southern Lebanon vacated by the Israelis.

All of the discussions and the technical work on the border have a practical impact. Once the U.N. has confirmed and verified that Israel is out of all Lebanese territory, the world organization is set to send in additional peacekeeping troops to help maintain stability along the Israeli-Lebanese border. The existing 4,500-member peacekeeping force has already increased its patrols in the area.

Since the pullout was completed Wednesday, there has been no fighting reported between Lebanese forces and Israel.