Village fears carve-up as Israel withdraws

Israel's Cabinet decided yesterday to withdraw its troops from the northern section of a village that regards itself as Syrian but has in recent years found itself straddling a United Nations-designated Israel-Lebanon borderline.

The decision has triggered protests from angry residents, fearful that the move will divide their close-knit community permanently.

The decision is the latest chapter in the complex history of Ghajar, a village of Allawite Muslim Syrians wedged between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It is intended to resolve a dispute that has exacerbated tensions between the two countries since Israel's war with Hizbollah militants four years ago.

Detailed negotiations will take place over the next few weeks on handing over responsibility for the security of northern Ghajar to peacekeepers in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil). By withdrawing to an area covering the southern part of the village only, Israel will be complying with a UN resolution that ended the 2006 war and required Israeli forces to pull back to south of a "blue line" between Israel and Lebanon.

As global forces once again threaten to impose change on this remote and ultra-sensitively located village of about 2200 people, scores of residents gathered outside the local council office as municipal official Ahmad Khatib declared: "A civilised Europe destroyed the Berlin wall. Now the UN is building the Berlin wall in Ghajar."

Yigal Palmor, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, insisted that there was "no intention" to divide the village physically, and that residents - most of whom have been Israeli citizens since the occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967 - have nothing to fear. "We hope to preserve their daily lives without any changes."

But the assurances seem unlikely to satisfy residents in the absence of direct guarantees or consultation. Khatib, the council's deputy director, said, "We have only learned about this from the media. If the Israelis withdraw, the UN will come here and start building a wall after a week or two. We know that."

Khatib said: "The mosque, the cemetery, the school and, most important, 11,500 dunums [nearly 1200ha] of land, is in the south."

Muheeba Khatib, 40, who lives in the north of the village, said she feared being cut off from her married daughter and two small grandchildren, and from Israeli-provided health services, and 400 apricot and olive trees long farmed by her family.

The farmland is 7km east of the village but only accessible through its southern section. "We are Syrians, like my father and my grandfather before him. But as long as the village is kept together and not split, we have no problem if it is in Syria, Lebanon or Israel," she said.

In the 1930s, the residents of Ghajar chose overwhelmingly to be part of Syria and remained so until the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights. Although the village was not occupied immediately, the local mukhtars (village leaders) petitioned Israel to do so - partly as an assertion of their Syrian nationality and common identification with the rest of the Golan.

After Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2000, the notional "blue line" designated by the UN passed through the middle of the village. Then, in the 2006 war, Israeli troops moved into the northern section - where about two-thirds of the villagers live - and have since patrolled its border with Lebanon.

Israel has been under international and Lebanese pressure to withdraw from northern Ghajar, and UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon Lord Williams said in August, after clashes at another part of the border, that such a withdrawal "would do a lot to help restore trust".

Lebanon's claim to the northern section, meanwhile, is underpinned partly by suggestions that the village did not start expanding northwards until after the Israeli occupation. But Khatib has produced a Syrian permit from December 24, 1958, allowing villagers to build on agricultural land in what is now the northern district. He said this disproved the Lebanese claim: "This is a lie ... and now it is a lie of the UN, too."

A Ghajar resident, Shehada Khatib, 26, said: "We are ready to sacrifice our souls to stop a wall. But if we can keep our land and get to work, then things would be OK."

- Independent