Ed Rettig, Acting Director, AJC-Jerusalem

November 22, 2010

Ghajar is an Arab village populated by Alawites, a minority sect in Syria that developed centuries ago out of Shi’ite Islam. Last week Israel decided to withdraw from Ghajar’s northern half, ceding it to Lebanon.

Situated where Syria, Lebanon and Israel (the Golan Heights) meet, but ethnically distinct from these neighbors, the village was polled in 1932 to determine whether it chose to join Syria or Lebanon, which were both under French mandatory rule at the time. The villagers voted for Syria, where about twenty percent of the population shares their Alawite identity. But the French never accurately demarcated the local border between Lebanon and Syria. In 1967, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, the village stood deserted by Syrian troops but unoccupied by the IDF. After more than two months, Ghajar took the initiative, petitioning the Israeli military governor of the newly conquered Golan Heights to recognize it as part of the occupied area. The Israelis agreed, and when Israel enacted its Golan Heights Law in 1981, most Ghajarites became citizens of Israel. They are quite possibly the only group in the world entitled to both Israeli and Syrian passports.

While the story of Ghajar has further unlikely twists and turns, the relevant fact for us is that in the process of certifying the Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, the UN drew what it called the Blue Line marking the boundary between Lebanon and Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 set the Blue Line as the demarcation for Israeli withdrawal, but the Israelis say they are waiting for decisions from the government of Lebanon.

Unfortunately for the citizens of Ghajar, the Blue Line ran through their village, dividing it between the northern half, in Lebanon, and the southern half, in the Israeli-occupied Golan. The residents vigorously contest the route delineated by the UN and insist that their village is one united entity in the Golan. Complicating matters further, pre-1967 maps are inconsistent, some placing the northern part of the village in Lebanon (and describing it as a neighboring hamlet) and others placing it in Syria.

Negotiations over an Israeli withdrawal from northern Ghajar have been going on since April 2009. Why is Israel withdrawing now?

The town has been open both to Hizbullah controlled territory in Lebanon and to Israel. It became a conduit for Hizbullah drug operations in Israel and a problematic weak spot in Israel’s northern border facing the Hizbullah state-within-a-state in Southern Lebanon. Still, Israeli national security experts suggest that other than tidying up its defensive line, the Israeli withdrawal is of little military consequence.

The Beirut government, meanwhile, is effectively paralyzed as it awaits the findings of the UN investigation of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, evidently at the hands of Hizbullah. It is widely feared that possible indictments of central Hizbullah figures may destabilize the country. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has suggested that "perhaps the time has come for a settlement between us and the UN, rather than waiting anymore for Lebanon." The withdrawal from northern Ghajar plays out such a scenario, while it also helps strengthen Prime Minister Saad Hariri at a time when he can certainly use every bit of reinforcement against Hizbullah intimidation.

Some Israelis tie this withdrawal also to the negotiations with the Palestinians. It shows the U.S. Administration and the Palestinians that Israel can and will carry out withdrawals where its security is reasonably considered. But Alistair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent in the region and a noted advocate of negotiations with Hamas, suggested to Al-Jazeera that the withdrawal indicates that Israel feels “very much under pressure, particularly in the Palestinian area on the settlement issue.” On the other hand, the Daily Star, Beirut’s English-language newspaper, illustrates the widespread befuddlement over the Israeli move with a headline that must surprise Israelis: “Israel once again wins the PR war.”

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