A blue line dance

Despite recent speculation to the contrary, it appears that the Israelis intend to indefinitely remain on Lebanese soil in the northern section of Ghajar, the village bisected by the United Nations-delineated Blue Line. The continued Israeli troop presence in northern Ghajar is a lingering legacy of the July 2006 war and has become a source of frustration for Lebanese, Israelis, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon(UNIFIL) and Alawite residents of the village. Still, the monthly UNIFIL-hosted tripartite meetings, attended by Lebanese and Israeli military delegations, have raised hopes of reviving the long defunct military commission that monitored the 1949 Armistice Agreement. A renewed monitoring group, under UN auspices, may even generate sufficient confidence for Israel to withdraw from the Shebaa Farms, the last significant territorial dispute between Lebanon and Israel. The curious fate of Ghajar is a consequence of the historically murky sovereignty of the tri-border area — the