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Hizbullah Claims Seven Villages in Northern Galilee are Part of Lebanon

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah - On May 25, 2000, Israel withdrew its troops from its security zone in South Lebanon under the pressure of Hizbullah's guerrilla attrition warfare. 24 years after the zone's establishment, Israel decided that redeploying along its international border with Lebanon could potentially put an end to its military confrontation with Hizbullah, the Shiite Iranian-directed militia. After consultation with the UN, Israel retreated to the "Blue Line." The three places Israel decided not to withdraw from were the Rosh Hanikra tunnel crossing, Ghajar village, and the Shab'ah farms. Israel claimed that these last two were not part of Lebanon since they were part of southern Syria until the Six-Day War in June 1967. Hizbullah, in concert with the Lebanese government, refused to recognize the Israeli claim. Hizbullah has raised an additional claim regarding seven Shia villages in the northern Galilee whose residents left their homes in the course of the 1948 war and never came back. Those seven villages had been initially part of Lebanon under the French mandate. In a later agreement between France and Great Britain, the villages were included in British-controlled mandatory Palestine, although their residents maintained their Lebanese citizenship. Following the 1949 armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel, the Lebanese government accepted the demarcation of the borders between Lebanon and mandatory Palestine as drawn in 1923. Accordingly, Lebanon relinquished its claim to those seven villages, which remained under Israeli sovereignty. A hundred years later, Hizbullah is demanding the restitution of those villages, even at the cost of a military confrontation with Israel. The writer was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence.
2024-02-21 00:00:00
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