Let us imagine for a moment that another Lebanese official, other than Speaker Nabih Berri, who is not allied with the “resistors” and “objectionists,” stood up to announce that an understanding had been reached, through the United States, to initiate negotiations with Israel. The answer is that this person would be considered a traitor, and it suffices to demonstrate the balance of power in Lebanon, and who actually holds the keys to war and peace in this unfortunate country and can use them whenever it sees fit and under whatever conditions it decides.
All of a sudden, sitting at the same table with the Israelis in Naqoura has become patriotic. The United States’ sponsorship of these negotiations, rather, its bid to “help establish and maintain a positive and constructive atmosphere between the two parties,” is a requisite to furthering Lebanon’s interest! What is meant by the “two parties”, of course, is Lebanon and Israel, which, in “objectionist” literature, is referred to as the “Israeli entity” sometimes and the “Zionist entity” at other times, although neither of these terms were mentioned in the agreement that Berri signed and read out to the media.
Covering this matter up required a systematic media makeover to ameliorate the mission. It was said, for example, that Berri’s initiative has nothing to do with the threat of US sanctions, which targeted his political aide, former minister Ali Hassan Khalil. Berri himself said that the agreement over a framework had been reached before the sanctions’ announcement, but it is obvious that “openness” to the US facilitation of the negotiation process will be positively received by an American administration known for its fondness for tributes to its roles in resolving intractable crises.
The media at hand has also repeatedly been referring to “indirect negotiations” in Naqoura. This is all to say that the “objectionists” who will oversee the negotiation process - despite claims that the matter will be handed to the Lebanese president and the Army Command- will not be sitting “directly” with the Israelis. They must have a different interpretation of the term “direct” than that with which we are familiar. Even with the negotiations being conducted through an intermediary, who is described as the “Great Satan” anyway, how else could one describe sitting with another person in the same room, talking to him and listening to his positions?
All of this compels us to say that raising the cause of the southern border and the relationship with Israel has always been meant for use in the Lebanese political bazaar and has nothing to do with Lebanon’s real interests.
The first Article of the armistice agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel in 1949 stipulates the following:
The following principles, which shall be fully observed by both Parties during the armistice, are hereby affirmed:
The injunction of the Security Council against resort to military force in settlement of the Palestine question shall henceforth be scrupulously respected by both Parties. No aggressive action by the armed forces - land, sea or air - of either Party shall be undertaken, planned, or threatened against the people or the armed forces of the other; it being understood that the use of the term “planned” in this context has no bearing on normal staff planning as generally practiced in military organizations. The right of each Party to its security and freedom from fear of attack by the armed forces of the other shall be fully respected.”
One does not need to conduct a thorough revision of Lebanese history to determine how Lebanon has dealt with this agreement. First, it allowed Palestinian organizations to operate in the south (the 1970 Cairo Agreement), with the Lebanese parliament legalizing this and carving out a part of this territory, openly referred to as “Fatah Land” as grounds from which the organizations could carry out their operations from the borders of Lebanon. At the time, this legislation was passed for no other reason than to serve internal electoral interests, both presidential and parliamentary. Afterward, the National Movement rallied around the Palestinian resistance’s activities during the Lebanese civil war to further the same political interests and exploit this activity to impose a new political reality and power balance. This pursuit ended with the amendments made to the Lebanese constitution that ended the war.
The war ended with a new political reality in Lebanon. It also ended, however, with a new reality in the south, manifested in Israel’s occupation of part of Lebanon’s territory. Here, too, politics and internal interests came into play, preventing any communication or mediation that would allow for the armistice agreement’s restoration, which could have paved the way for Israel’s withdrawal in exchange for the cessation of the operations conducted against it from Lebanon, as stipulated by this agreement. Nothing of the sort happened. Indeed merely proposing something along these lines was taboo. Instead, bringing about liberation was entrusted to a single party that would act as it pleased, per its internal interests and those of its regional sponsor, Iran. No party or political entity in Lebanon could question the tripartite slogan (the army, the people, and the resistance).
The resistance led to the Israeli forces’ exit from Lebanon in May 2000. This could have been a chance for turning the black page that cost the Lebanese their youth’s blood and destroyed villages and regions in the south. However, Hezbollah’s interests and the preservation of its influence and weapons dictated new reasons that would allow for politically investing in resistance slogans domestically. Here, the “objectionists” recalled a small chunk of Lebanese territory called the Shebaa Farms, which had been occupied by Israel since 1967 and has nothing to do with the Israeli occupation of the southern territory covered by Security Council Resolution 425, from which Israel withdrew. Its area is no larger than 200 square kilometers.
Solving the Shebaa problem and restoring Lebanese sovereignty has nothing to do with Israel; in fact, it requires the cooperation of Hezbollah’s friends in Damascus.
In 2000, the Lebanese authorities sent to the United Nations a 1966 map indicating that this area was within Lebanon's borders. The UN responded as follows: “The United Nations has ten other maps issued after 1996 by Lebanese governmental institutions, including the Ministry of Defense and the Army, all of which place farms inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations has also studied six maps issued by the Syrian Arab Republic's government, including three maps dating back to 1966 that indicate that the farms are located inside the Syrian Arab Republic.”
When the Security Council discussed the implementation of Resolution 1701 issued after the 2006 war, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized that the solution to the Shebaa Farms question requires a Lebanese-Syrian agreement regarding the demarcation of the international borders they share.
Here we arrive at the other segment of the demarcation process, the land border. If the Lebanese and Israeli delegations reach an agreement on the demarcation of the maritime borders, it could pave the way for resolving their land border differences, which the two sides say are minor. Will that open the door to settling the pending border issues with Syria, including Syrian regime affirmation to the UN that the Shebaa Farms is Lebanese territory, an issue which Bashar al-Assad’s regime refuses to discuss? Or will it be easier to resolve border disputes with Israel than it is with Syria?
Will this put an end to the abuse of sovereignty and borders, and will Hezbollah become a Lebanese political party that does not raise self-righteous slogans about resistance and liberation?
