BEIRUT, 18 October 2006 — The United Nations said yesterday a “few minor technical issues” are due to be settled soon to allow Israel to heed demands for a pullout from the Lebanese side of the border village of Gajar. Brig. Gen. J.P. Nehra, acting commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), met yesterday with Lebanese and Israeli officers to discuss “the situation around Gajar and future security arrangements for the area.”
“The meeting went very well, I think we have more or less closed all the gaps except for a few minor technical issues that should be finalized very soon and then I expect the IDF (Israeli Army) to complete their withdrawal from south Lebanon,” he said.
Israeli troops continued to occupy the Lebanese northern parts of Ghajar, after their Oct. 1 withdrawal from southern Lebanon. That came almost seven weeks after a UN-brokered truce took effect on Aug. 14, ending 34 days of war against the Hezbollah resistance group.
Ghajar lies at the foot of Mount Hermon and straddles the Lebanese-Syrian border. It is perched on a cliff overlooking the strategically important Wazzani spring, which has been a source of continuous disputes between Israel and Lebanon. It is inhabited by Alawites, most of whom have obtained Israeli citizenship even though they consider themselves Syrian.
The village is an extension of the Syrian Golan Heights plateau, which Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then annexed in 1981.
According to a UN-drawn “blue line” marking the border between Israel and Lebanon following a May 2000 Israeli troop pullout, one-third of the village is on Lebanese soil, while the other two thirds are part of occupied Syrian territory.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa pledged that member states would join forces to help Lebanon’s postwar reconstruction, at a meeting in Beirut yesterday.
“This meeting is considered the practical launch of the reconstruction, rebuilding and assistance of Lebanon,” Moussa said at the opening of an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the League’s Economic and Social Council.
“We will not let Lebanon (continue to) be the scene of conflicts and wars, we will not let the great people of Lebanese fight on their own,” he told Arab finance and economy ministers. “We, the Arab states, have decided to help Lebanon with all our strength, capability and determination, and we will continue that important task,” the secretary general of the 22-member organization said.
