72 Articles Section
IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin Winter 2000-2001©
On 24 May 2000 the last Israeli troops deployed in south Lebanon pulled back into
Israel, closing and padlocking the border gate behind them. Less than a month later
the UN Security Council endorsed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assertion that
Israel had “withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Resolution 425” –
bringing to an end Israel’s 22 year presence in south Lebanon. These events have
focused worldwide attention on a hitherto relatively insignificant issue – the
definition of the Lebanese-Israeli boundary. The legacy of political and strategic
problems associated with this border, the result of short-sighted decisions and
compromises prompted by colonial concerns some eighty years ago, means that to
date this border is neither properly defined along its full length nor fully accepted by
the nations either side of it.
The Israeli withdrawal in May was to a line defined by the UN and designated as the
“Blue Border Line”, which is more or less consistent with the Anglo-French 1923
accord. However, disagreements between Lebanon, Israel and the UN as to the exact
line of the border and the consequent refusal of Lebanon to deploy troops to southern
Lebanon and allow the UN to deploy to the border created a dangerous void along
the border. Hezbullah, which had been instrumental in speeding up the Israeli
withdrawal were still in place in the area and the existence of several controversial
issues along the border meant that the border region could be a major flash point in
the volatile Middle East. The aim of this article is to examine this border region
from a geopolitical and military viewpoint and to highlight the various flash points,
which could become the next battleground, if peace should elude this unfortunate
region once again.
The story of the border between Lebanon and Israel, delineated between French
Syria and British Palestine between 1916 and 1923 is regarded as one of the strangest
enigmas of modern times. The result of high handed colonial politics undertaken in
ignorance of the realities on the ground, it has already led to years of dangerous
confrontation and may yet be the cause of more in the near future.
During the First World War, when it became evident that the Ottoman Empire was
crumbling to pieces, the then world powers, France and Britain discussed future
plans to share the spoils in the Middle East. France, which had historic ties with the
Maronite Catholic community in the Levant focused its attention on northern
territories in Lebanon and Syria, while Great Britain sought contacts with the Arabs
becoming increasingly important due to the recently discovered oil in the Persian
Gulf. There were also other groups interested in Palestine, apart from the Arabs – the
Jewish Zionists, who had been promised a national home in Palestine in 1917, by the
then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour. But the roots of the Lebanon-
Israel border lie in the May 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, the outcome of secret
negotiations between Sir Mark Sykes MP and the French Arabist, François Georges
Picot, former consul general in Beirut.
1
The spheres of influence created by the
agreement would have left the watersheds in the region divided in a particularly
convoluted manner: the Litani (otherwise known as Quasimiya) river and the Jordan
headwaters would be under French control, while the Sea of Galilee would be
divided between Britain and France. The reasons for this oversight, a tragic one for a
future state of Palestine, were the strategic locations of railway and oil lines, which
British negotiators at the time viewed as of utmost importance to their imperial
THE ISRAEL – LEBANON BORDER ENIGMA
David Eshel
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
To date this border
is neither properly
defined along its full
length nor fully
accepted by the
nations either side
of it
