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”.



Loss, Worry, Relief and Prayers for Better Days as Ramadan Begins in Gaza amid a Fragile Ceasefire

 Palestinians sit at a large table surrounded by the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings as they gather for iftar, the fast-breaking meal, on the first day of Ramadan in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 1, 2025 (AP)
Palestinians sit at a large table surrounded by the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings as they gather for iftar, the fast-breaking meal, on the first day of Ramadan in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 1, 2025 (AP)
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Loss, Worry, Relief and Prayers for Better Days as Ramadan Begins in Gaza amid a Fragile Ceasefire

 Palestinians sit at a large table surrounded by the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings as they gather for iftar, the fast-breaking meal, on the first day of Ramadan in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 1, 2025 (AP)
Palestinians sit at a large table surrounded by the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings as they gather for iftar, the fast-breaking meal, on the first day of Ramadan in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 1, 2025 (AP)

Before the war, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was a festive time of increased worship, social gatherings and cheer for Fatima Al-Absi. Together with her husband, the resident of Jabaliya in Gaza said she used to do Ramadan shopping, visit relatives and head to the mosque for prayers.

But the Israel-Hamas war has shredded many of the familiar and cherished threads of Ramadan as Al-Absi once knew it: her husband and a son-in-law have been killed, her home was damaged and burnt and the mosque she attended during Ramadan destroyed, she said.

"Everything has changed," she said on Saturday as her family observed the first day of Ramadan. "There’s no husband, no home, no proper food and no proper life."

For Al-Absi and other Gaza residents, Ramadan started this year under a fragile ceasefire agreement that paused more than 15 months of a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated the Gaza Strip. Compared to last Ramadan, many found relief in the truce — but there's also worry and fear about what’s next and grief over the personal and collective losses, the raw wounds and the numerous scars left behind.

"I’ve lost a lot," said the 57-year-old grandmother, who’s been reduced to eking out an existence amid the wreckage. "Life is difficult. May God grant us patience and strength," she added.

Israel’s government said early Sunday it supports a proposal to extend the first phase of the ceasefire in Gaza through Ramadan and Passover even as Hamas has insisted earlier on negotiating the truce’s second phase. The statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office came minutes after the first phase ended, and as talks have begun on starting the second phase.

The statement gave new details on what Israel described as a US proposal, which it said was made after US envoy Steve Witkoff got "the impression that at this stage there was no possibility of bridging the positions of the parties to end the war, and that more time was needed for talks on a permanent ceasefire."

"We’re scared because there's no stability," Al-Absi said and added that she’s praying for the war to end and that she can’t bear any more losses. She spoke before Israel’s statement.

Though Ramadan is still far from normal, some in the Gaza Strip said that, in some ways, it feels better than last year’s.

"We can’t predict what will happen next," Amal Abu Sariyah, in Gaza City, said before the month’s start. "Yes, the country is destroyed and the situation is very bad, but the feeling that the shelling and the killing ... have stopped, makes you (feel) that this year is better than the last one."

Overshadowed by war and displacement, last Ramadan, was "very bad," for the Palestinian people, she said. The 2024 Ramadan in Gaza began with ceasefire talks then at a standstill, hunger worsening across the strip and no end in sight to the war.

The war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel in which Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. Israel’s military offensive has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Vast areas of Gaza have been destroyed.

Under the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded back into northern Gaza. After initial relief and joy at returning to their homes — even if damaged or destroyed — they’ve been grappling with living amid the wreckage.

As Palestinians in the Gaza Strip prepared for Ramadan, shopping for essential household goods and food, some lamented harsh living conditions and economic hardships, but also said they rely on their faith in God to provide for them.

"I used to help people. ... Today, I can’t help myself," said Nasser Shoueikh. "My situation, thank God, used to be better and I wasn’t in need for anything. ... We ask God to stand by us."

For observant Muslims the world over, Ramadan is a time for fasting daily from dawn to sunset, increased worship, religious reflection, charity and good deeds. Socially, it often brings families and friends together in festive gatherings around meals to break their fast.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Fatima Barbakh, from the southern city of Khan Younis, said her Ramadan shopping was limited to the essentials.

"We can’t buy lanterns or decorations like we do every Ramadan," she said.

Back in Jabaliya, Al-Absi bitterly recalled how she used to break her fast with her husband, how much she misses him and how she remembers him when she prays.

"We don't want war," she said. "We want peace and safety."