DATE=6/14/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=ISRAEL / LEBANON BORDER
NUMBER=5-46500
BYLINE=ROSS DUNN
DATELINE=GHAJAR
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: An Arab village is threatened with being torn-
apart in a tug-of-war over disputed international
borders. Ross Dunn reports from Ghajar, which was
once part of Syria but now faces the prospect of being
partitioned between Lebanon and Israel.
TEXT: Ghajar lies at the very cross-roads of the
Middle East conflict.
The village has remained under Israeli military
occupation since its capture from Syria during the
1967 Middle East War. The residents have adopted a
pragmatic approach to their predicament, accepting
Israeli citizenship while proclaiming their hope that
one day they would be returned to Syrian sovereignty.
But Ghajar faces being pushed in another direction,
this time into Lebanon.
This follows a ruling by United Nations officials that
about 60 per cent of the village belongs to Lebanon
and should be handed over by Israel.
Otherwise, the officials argue they will not be able
to declare that Israel, which recently ended two
decades of military occupation in southern Lebanon,
has completely withdrawn from all parts of the
country.
But the residents themselves are outraged at the
prospect of facing friends and relatives across an
international border fence, as the principal of the
high-school, Omran Khatib, explains.
/// OMRAN KHATIB ACT ONE ///
We are not against us being given to Lebanon,
to give the whole village of Lebanon, but to
give it with the whole land, the whole village,
not divided. We can't imagine a situation,
where we are separated from each other, we are
separated from our lands.
/// END ACT ///
For the past week, the normally peaceful people of
Ghajar have been burning tires and blocking roads to
protest plans to seize any part of their land.
Mr. Khatib says the villagers feel that they are alone
and defenseless and are calling on the international
community to consider their plight.
/// OMRAN KHATIB ACT TWO ///
No one cares about us. No one cares about a
human being. So we asked all the leaders in the
world, please try to find a solution for our
problem. It's a very difficult situation. We
are not living. We are dying every day. Our
children are not going to school for one week.
Our children are sleeping on the streets for one
week.
/// END ACT ///
All of the villagers are Alawite, a sect of Shiite
Islam which originated in Syria.
One elderly resident Suliman al-Khatib -- speaking
through a translator -- says this means it is Syria
and not Lebanon which has the right to claim
sovereignty over Ghajar.
/// SULIMAN KHATIB ACT ONE / WITH TRANSLATOR ///
We are Syrians and we will stay with our land.
We stay here since 1967 because of our land and
we are Syrians 100 per cent. Our first
grandfather is a Syrian.
/// ACT ENDS ///
He says that the villagers will never accept the
United Nations ruling that the town should be divided
between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan.
Standing in a park in Ghajar, overlooking Lebanon, he
says that until now, there was never a dispute over
borders.
/// SULIMAN KHATIB ACT TWO / WITH TRANSLATOR ///
This is Lebanon. Look here is the Hasbani River
and this was for generations the natural border
and you can see it from here. This was the
border between Syria and Lebanon. And we know
from generation to generation this was the
border.
/// END ACT ///
An engineer in Ghajar, Ghassan Khatib says the
residents will mount a campaign of peaceful resistance
if an attempt is made to partition the village.
He says the people will not resort to violence but
they want to send a message that it would be unjust to
transform their village into two ghettos because of an
international border dispute.
/// GHASSAN KHATIB ACT ///
You will be in like in a ghetto, sorry, exactly
in a ghetto, just in your home, with a fence
around you and you can see your lands and you
cannot do anything.
/// END ACT ///
He says that Ghajar also lays claim to a surrounding
area of farms, totaling about one-thousand-100
hectares.
Mr. Khatib says the land is "the soul" of the people
and they would regard any attempt to divide the area
as tantamount to an attack on their very lives.
(Signed)
NEB/RD/JWH/KBK
14-Jun-2000 13:23 PM LOC (14-Jun-2000 1723 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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