Resisting Israeli occupation and expansionism is a huge deal for Hezbollah (a terror organization supplied, financed and backed politically by Iran and Syria):
The entire Shebaa zone covers such a miniscule area (less than two miles across) it is just ludicrous to define it as Israeli expansionism!
You accept that it is not within the bounds of Israel. The miniscule nature of the area doesn't mean that it isn't an expansion. It's a piece of territory that Israel wants :
It is a strategic military sector, on the edge of the Golan Heights...
and so Israel takes it. Because Israel can. But it is a miniscule area. How strategic can it really be? Syria says it's part of Lebanon - they're not claiming it. The Lebanese are claiming it because it was administered as part of Lebanon when Lebanon and Syria were French
sous-states. People that own land there have Lebanese documents to prove it. The border between the French and British Mandates, at that particular point, was never officially mapped and defined (cost was an element). The upshot is that the people that live around there reckon it's part of Lebanon (created by the French out of their Mandate in 1926, IIRC, and not properly mapped then either; cost was an element).
But :
and is
not recognized by the
International UNIFIL as Lebanese territory.
Are you absolutely sure that you want bring in UN agencies as evidence as to where Middle Eastern borders lie?
Shouldn't the views of the people that live there be more important than UN inheritance of Mandate powers?
That the Hezbollah say it is Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory is meaningless, since they also claim that all of Israel itself sits on occupied Palestinian lands.
I agree with them that Israel is an agressive act in itself, and the Shia Lebanese felt that before 1982. but where are the examples of Shia Lebanese assaults on Israel before Sharon's invasion? For the Shia Lebanese, the focus is on the Maronite predominance - or potential predominance. Israel features as a subsidiary issue. During the period of Israeli occupation, it was the immediate issue, but that period is over - except in one miniscule fragment. (The presence of the PLO was a subsidiary issue to the Israeli one - without Israel there would have been no Palestinian expellees to murky up an already complicated situation.)
Not everything is about Israel. But the existence of Israel has had effects.
Israel, by holding on to this miniscule territory that is in its own salient, a strategic cost not gain, keeps the hostilities going. Why?
Israel to the Hezbollah is an illegal entity, and their goal is to fight Israel, no matter what.
How do you know? What if Israel just pulled out of the Sheba'a Farms? Why haven't they tried it? It's a miniscule territory, and what would they lose? If Hezbullah
continued to attack Israel you'd have an argument, and so would Israel. Israel gave up all the rest of Southern Lebanon they'd occupied for 18 years. Why not give this up as well?
Perhaps Peres could try the idea on Sharon.
