Hundreds protest village’s division between Israel and Lebanon

Jack Katzenell

Wednesday, June 7, 2000 | 8:21 a.m.

GHAJAR, Israel-Lebanon Border - Burning tires and blocking roads, hundreds of residents protested Wednesday against U.N. mapmakers trying to draw the Lebanese-Israeli border through the middle of their village.

At the entrance of Ghajar, protesters carried banners reading "One Village, One Fate." About 400 villagers blocked a road junction with rocks and barbed wire, which was later cleared.

The protests were sparked by U.N. officials who "began marking the border right through our village" on Tuesday, village legal adviser Suleiman Khader said.

"They painted one mark on the sidewalk, but our people stopped them and painted it over in white," Khader said.

The United Nations is completing its remapping of the border between Israel and Lebanon in the wake of Israel's May 24 troop withdrawal from south Lebanon.

Most Ghajar residents - who are mainly Alawites, a fringe Muslim sect - oppose the division of the village between Israel and Lebanon. Because the village was captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war, they say, it should either revert to Syria in a future Israeli-Syrian peace treaty or remain in Israel.

U.N. officials suggested that even if the new border runs right through Ghajar, a solution can be found to keep it whole. "The United Nations has no intention of dividing the village physically," said Timur Goksel, a spokesman for U.N. forces in south Lebanon.

Residents say that they will not allow the U.N teams to officially mark the border.

"We do not belong to Lebanon, we belong to Syria, we never were in Lebanon and we don't understand how we were transferred to Lebanon," said Najib Hijazi, Ghajar's mayor. Still, he said it would be better to transfer the whole village to Lebanon than to be split in two.

Israeli Cabinet Minister Matan Vilnai said Israel would do all it could to keep the village intact and under its security control.

The village sits in what has long been a triangle of murky borders, at the foot of Mount Dov, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.

At that time, Israeli soldiers marched into the village, but then withdrew, leaving Ghajar cut off on all sides. With Syrian passports, villagers could not easily enter Lebanon, while the Israelis blocked to road to Syria.

The people of Ghajar then asked the Israelis to take over the rest of their village, and accepted Israeli citizenship.

Elsewhere along the border Monday, Hezbollah guerrillas blew up a border crossing used by Lebanese workers to reach their jobs in Israel during the occupation.

The guerrillas blew up eight buildings at the Tourmos border crossing, just 15 yards from Israeli soldiers guarding the frontier near the Israeli communal farm of Milkhia.