Hezbollah 'uses Shebaa farms dispute to hold on to weapons'

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has angered most of Lebanon’s politicians by saying the Shebaa farms are Syrian

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Joumblatt. AFP

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt caused a stir last week when he told Russia Today that the occupied Shebaa farms are not Lebanese but Syrian.

Mr Jumblatt claimed that after the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, Lebanese officers, with the help of Syrian officers, altered maps of the area.

The aim was to “maintain a reason for Syrians and non-Syrians to free the Shebaa farms however they can", said Mr Jumblatt, indirectly attacking Hezbollah’s claim to liberate Lebanese land from Israel.

This argument allows Hezbollah’s militias to continue bearing weapons, even though all other armed groups were disarmed when the civil war ended in 1990.

Asher Kaufman, author of Contested frontiers in the Syria-Lebanon-Israel Region, agrees with Mr Jumblatt.

“In 2000, Lebanese officials gave the UN-altered maps that supposedly showed that the area was Lebanese," Kaufman said.

"UN officials critically noted that and did not consider these maps in their decisions on the location of the Blue Line.”

He was referring to the line that has become the unofficial border with Lebanon.

Mr Jumblatt made a similar statement in 2005, when he told Al Arabiya that “we must end this game that is mean to serve different interests”.

Several Lebanese politicians criticised Mr Jumblatt’s claims, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In a speech last Thursday, Nasrallah said: “The resistance bears the responsibility, along with the state and the Lebanese people, to liberate the Shebaa farms, the hills of Kafr Shuba and the Lebanese part of Ghajar,” which are other disputed localities close to the Golan Heights.

These localities have been used in Lebanon since 2006 to describe the entire land claimed by Hezbollah, Mr Kaufman said.

“It is simply a way to give the impression that the area Israel holds is larger than what it really is."

“The Shebaa farms are ours," Mr Nasrallah said. “This subject is settled."

He said Mr Jumblatt's words “had no value”.

On Sunday the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, Nabih Berri, organised a meeting between representatives of Mr Jumblatt's progressive socialist party and Hezbollah to defuse tension.