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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Israel to pull out from Lebanon border village | |
| 2010-11-08 | |
| JERUSALEM - Israel is planning to withdraw its troops from part of a disputed village on the Lebanese border and hand over control to a UN peacekeeping force, Israeli media reported on Sunday. A government official, quoted in Haaretz newspaper, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to inform UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the planned move when the two meet in New York on Monday. Plans to withdraw from the northern sector of Ghajar village have been discussed with senior officials from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which is deployed along the border with Israel to keep the peace. The village, which has around 2,200 residents, lies on the borders of Lebanon, Syria and the Golan Heights which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981. Netanyahu reportedly plans to present the Ghajar proposal to his political-security cabinet when he returns to Israel after a five-day trip to the United States. UNIFIL confirmed it has been pressing Israel to withdraw from northern Ghajar in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon’s Shia movement Hezbollah. ‘This has been a longstanding issue,’ UNIFIL’s director of political and civil affairs Milos Strugar told AFP. The United Nations had been ‘actively engaged’ with both parties to broker a pullout of Israeli troops. ‘In our effort to advance the process of withdrawal, UNIFIL has recently suggested some ideas and modalities for consideration by the parties,’ he said, without giving details. Northern Ghajar is in Lebanon and the rest lies in the Golan Heights, but Israel took over the Lebanese half during the 2006 war. The villagers of southern Ghajar were Syrian nationals when Israel occupied the region but they took Israeli nationality after the Golan annexation, a move not recognised by the international community. Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar ‘The aggressions of the Israeli enemy are not limited to Ghajar. The Israeli enemy should withdraw not only from northern Ghajar ... but also from other occupied areas including Kfar Shuba and the Shebaa Farms,’ he said. ‘Any withdrawal is a result of the steadfastness of the Lebanese people, army and Hezbollah,’ he told AFP.
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| Posted by:Steve White |