Has Iran Inherited Syria’s Role at the Shebaa Farms ‘Mailbox’?

Israeli forces fire artillery from their position on the border with Lebanon after a barrage of rockets were fired from Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP)
Israeli forces fire artillery from their position on the border with Lebanon after a barrage of rockets were fired from Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP)
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Has Iran Inherited Syria’s Role at the Shebaa Farms ‘Mailbox’?

Israeli forces fire artillery from their position on the border with Lebanon after a barrage of rockets were fired from Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP)
Israeli forces fire artillery from their position on the border with Lebanon after a barrage of rockets were fired from Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP)

In July 2001 Hezbollah struck the position of an Israeli radar. The move was an act of retaliation to Tel Aviv’s attack on a Syrian military radar in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley region. That attack was, in turn, a response to Hezbollah’s shelling of positions in the disputed Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms region.

Twenty years later, the Iran-backed party struck an open area in the Shebaa Farms and Israel retaliated with artillery fire. The attacks were a sign of their commitment to the “rules of engagement” in place since 2006 after testing how much they can be changed and after southern Lebanon has become tied to the “shadow war” playing out between Israel and Iran on land and at sea.

How has the “southern front” become more connected to Tehran than to Damascus? What do the Shebaa Farms have to do with the Golan Heights? Is there a connection between the escalation in Syria’s Daraa and the test in southern Lebanon?

After he became prime minister in 2001, Israel’s Arial Sharon attempted to change the “rules of the game” in Lebanon. He retaliated to Hezbollah attacks by ordering raids on Syrian forces in Lebanon – a first since 1982. Previously, such attacks were limited to Lebanese targets.

At the time, Damascus was in control and averted any direct confrontation with Israel. That role was relegated to Hezbollah. All sides, therefore, conveyed messages through the Shebaa Farms that acted as a form of “mailbox” after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. The new rules were: An Israeli radar in return for a Syrian one, with Hezbollah executing the order.

Several developments have since taken place in Lebanon, Syria and the region that have altered this equation:

One: After the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Damascus declared that Shebaa was Lebanese territory occupied by Israel. The United Nations, however, says that it is in fact Syrian territory that has been occupied since 1967. Then Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa informed then UN chief Kofi Annan that Syria views the territory as Lebanese, granting Hezbollah free reign to “resist” Israeli occupation.

Two: The death of Syrian president Hafez Assad in June 2000 and his son Bashar’s assuming of power changed the equation between Damascus and Hezbollah. When paying his respects at Hafez’s grave in al-Qardaha in 2001, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to “liberate the Shebaa Farms.”

Three: The Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon in April 2005. The assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005 prompted the withdrawal. Ahead of the pullout, Hezbollah staged a “loyalty to Syria” march. Soon after, the party would begin to hold greater sway in Lebanon, while Iran’s influence in the region would outmatch Syria’s and its traditional allies.

Four: Syria and Israel, through American mediation, were on the verge of signing of a peace deal in late February 2011, just days before the eruption of the Syrian protests. American mediator Frederic Hof had drafted the deal that would include Damascus severing “military ties” with Iran and Hezbollah and “neutralizing” any threat to Israel. In return, Syria would reclaim the Golan Heights according to the June 4, 1967 border.

At the time, Hof recalled that Bashar had informed him that the Shebaa Farms were Syrian territory, not Lebanese. Bashar falsely predicted that Lebanon would soon follow in striking peace with Israel should Syria make a similar deal. Such a move would have inevitably impacted Iran and Hezbollah’s influence.

Five: The eruption of anti-regime protests in Syria in March 2011 gave way to Hezbollah and Iran’s eventual intervention in the country to defend their ally in Damascus. They would later reinforce their military presence in various Syrian regions, especially the south. The Golan Heights would become “tied” to other Iranian “fronts” in the Middle East.

Six: Russia intervened militarily in Syrian in September 2015 to support the regime and help it reclaim territory after it was on the brink of collapse. Syria was therefore, turned into a Russian base and starting point for its expansion in the Middle East. Moscow would sponsor various deals and settlements, including one in mid-2018 that called for Iran and its allies to pull out from the South and the area bordering the Golan.

Seven: Israel would soon begin carrying out raids against Iranian and Hezbollah positions in Syria in an attempt to impose “red lines” that include preventing Iran from establishing military bases, preventing the delivery of precision missiles to Hezbollah and preventing Tehran and the party’s military entrenchment in the Golan. The United States in turn entrenched itself in the al-Tanf base on the border between Syria, Jordan and Iraq in an attempt to block the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut route. In 2020, Israel announced that it had carried out over 50 air strikes against Syrian targets and fired over 500 projectiles and rockets.

Eight: Syria transformed into a “mailbox” between Iran and Israel after the assassination of Jihad Mughnieh, the son of prominent Hezbollah operative Imad. Jihad was killed by an Israeli strike on the Golan Heights in early 2015. The ensuing escalation was “limited and agreed” to be restricted to the Shebaa Farms in line with the “rules of the game” that had been in place after the July 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

In February 2018, Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli F-16 jet in retaliation to Israeli strikes that were prompted by an Iranian drone’s breach of Israeli airspace. Tel Aviv responded by carrying raids against Syrian and Iranian positions. That was the first time that Israel and Iran directly confronted each other since the 1979 Iranian revolution. It also marked the widest Israeli attack against Syrian forces since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Golan had by now become one of the arenas where retaliations can play out. At the time, an Iranian Mahan Air jet flew over the al-Tanf base to test the American response. An American F-15 flew very close to the Iranian aircraft and shots were fired from Syria Quneitra towards the Golan, prompting Israeli helicopter fire.

Nine: For the first time, Russia began to detail Israeli strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah positions in Syria. At the same time, reports said Damascus had received a new anti-aircraft defense system that would protect Syria against Israeli strikes. Simultaneously, Russia was exerting efforts to meet its commitments in the deal on southern Syria, specifically in Daraa, amid complaints from Jordan, Israel and the US over Iranian attempts to advance in the area.

Ten: Iranian sources confirmed the July 29 drone attack on an Israeli tanker in the Gulf of Oman that left a Briton and Romanian dead. This marked the first escalation of its kind between Israel and Iran. The drone attack was retaliation to Israeli raids in June on central Syria that killed senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah.

Those attacks were followed up last week with rocket fire from southern Lebanon on northern Israel, not the Shebaa Farms nor the Golan. Israel consequently fired back with air strikes, not artillery fire, on Lebanon – the first such attacks since 2006.

The two sides would soon, however, return to limiting their retaliatory attacks to Shebaa – the old mailbox. This time around, the messages were being exchanged between Tel Aviv and Tehran that are waging both a “shadow” and direct war. As it stands, new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is unhappy with the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear deal, while Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi is keen on burnishing his credentials on the Arab “fronts”.



Resentment Growing Among Hezbollah Supporters after Latest War with Israel

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on December 13, 2024, after Israel withdrew from the area as Lebanon's army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on December 13, 2024, after Israel withdrew from the area as Lebanon's army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. (AFP)
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Resentment Growing Among Hezbollah Supporters after Latest War with Israel

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on December 13, 2024, after Israel withdrew from the area as Lebanon's army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on December 13, 2024, after Israel withdrew from the area as Lebanon's army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. (AFP)

Resentment is growing among Hezbollah’s popular support base in wake of the latest war against Israel and as more families begin to realize the extent of the damage incurred by their properties during the conflict.

Hezbollah supporters have in private spoken about their resentment, but now some have started to speak openly about refusing to return to their homes in the southern suburb of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, or even rebuilding their houses in the South because they fear the eruption of a new war that will leave their livelihoods in ruin yet again.

Some residents of Dahiyeh, the South and eastern Bekaa region have opted to return to homes that were not destroyed, while others have refused to return to regions that will likely be targeted again in any future war. So, they have started to seek alternatives due to a growing conviction that they no longer want to be fodder for any new conflict.

Ali Shehab, whose house in Dahiyeh was slightly damaged, has decided to seek a “safe area” where he can rent a house for the coming years.

He took the decision even though his house could be renovated swiftly. Hezbollah had inspected the house and decided against offering him temporary lodging until it can be renovated at the party’s expense.

Shehab said the party would not compensate him for the solar panels that he lost during the war.

Hezbollah had announced that it would offer compensation to families whose homes were damaged or destroyed. The party offered 12,000 dollars, divided equally in covering a year’s rent and buying necessities for the rented property.

It also asked owners of damaged houses to carry out the renovations themselves and that it would later repay them. However, the repayment process is slow, complained affected owners.

Shehab told Asharq Al-Awsat that resentment is growing among Hezbollah’s Shiite support base. The party has tried to appease them by offering these compensations, he revealed.

He predicted that the resentment will only grow if the compensations do not satisfy the people.

The resentment, he explained, is rooted in fears over the future. The prevailing sentiment is “we don’t want to rebuild our homes to lose them again in another war ten or 15 years from now. We don’t want to start over again. So families are asking themselves: do we rebuild or not? Do we return to Dahiyeh or seek a safer area?”

“Anyone who has an alternative has not and will not return to Dahiyeh,” stressed Shehab.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP)

Losses in two wars

Hussein A. told Asharq Al-Awsat that his family lost his house in Dahiyeh and in the southern border town of al-Khiam. He is now residing in Zahle and his relatives in another region. “We will not return to Dahiyeh any time soon,” he revealed.

He said that no one has approached his family about compensation.

Moreover, Hussein stressed that this was not the first time he loses his home because of a war between Hezbollah and Israel. Back in 2006, his family did not receive compensation from the party in Khiam because it refused to raise the Hezbollah flag over their homes.

“We don’t care for what they have to offer,” he stated. “My brother’s house was destroyed in the strike that assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. My house is no longer livable after a strike hit a nearby warehouse. We were told it was storing wood, but it turned out to be a Hezbollah warehouse.”

“We are not Hezbollah supporters who are forced to suffer the consequences of its decisions. We were born Shiite. At one point we used to support the party as they liberated our land, but we no longer tolerate wars,” Hussein said.

“What have we gained from the latest war? They kept on telling us that Israel will not succeed in occupying villages and yet, 20 days since the ceasefire, we haven’t been able to visit them,” he added.

Hussein said he only had one wish, that his children live in their village and “that they do not end up being displaced the way we were.”

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that he was seriously considering immigrating from Lebanon, “which is no longer ours.”

He said he wanted to raise his children in a safe environment. “We can no longer tolerate more losses,” he added, while criticizing Hezbollah for “engaging in wars that have nothing to do with us”

This picture shows a heavily damaged house in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on December 13, 2024, after Israel withdrew from the area as Lebanon's army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. (AFP)

Alternatives

Political analyst Ali al-Amin said Hezbollah and its supporters in Dahiyeh, the South and the Bekaa are confronted with the massive destruction and a crisis of finding alternative housing for residents whose homes have been destroyed.

They also must deal with restoring services and removing the rubble.

On the growing resentment, he explained to Asharq Al-Awsat that that stems from the shaky ceasefire, noting that Israel continues to carry out military operations in the South.

The supporters namely want compensation for their losses so that they can rebuild and renovate their homes, while it seems that Hezbollah is not really taking any initiative to do so.

Hezbollah officials have even started to throw this responsibility on the state, raising fears that the people will be left to fend for themselves with no one to rescue them from this disaster, Amin remarked.

Furthermore, he noted that some 30 villages along the border with Israel have been completely destroyed. It remains to be seen if Israel will allow the residents to return or even rebuild their homes.

This had led to a growing sense of pessimism about the coming days, he continued.

Wealthy families in the South have sought houses in areas outside of Hezbollah’s influence, while others have opted to immigrate.

Complaints have also been made against Hezbollah over its perceived shortcomings in dealing with the people’s losses and delays in paying compensation, Amine added.