The village of Ghajar

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Israel is prepared to hand the northern section of a divided village on the Lebanon border over to United Nations forces. But people in the town aren’t happy about it. They say they’re part of Syria. Aaron Schacther reports from the village of Ghajar.

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MARCO WERMAN:  A divided village sits on the border between Israel and Lebanon.  Israel took over the southern part more than 40 years ago and annexed it 14 years later.  Israel took over the northern area from Lebanon in 2006.  The Israelis are now prepared to hand that northern part over to forces from the United Nations.  That would complete Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, as outlined in the U.N. resolution that ended the war with Hezbollah.  But Israel once guarantees that Hezbollah won’t use the village to stage attacks across the border.  The World’s Aaron Schachter reports.

AARON SCHACHTER:  The village of Ghajar sets at the end of a long, single laned road in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.  An Israeli army checkpoint sits on that road just at the entrance.  Residents are free to come and go.  They’re Israeli after all, but their ID’s and cars are checked.  This woman sits baking wide, flat bread in a gas fired oven, kind of like a small barbecue.  Her friend stretches and pounds the dough.  The woman says she wants outsiders to just leave her village alone, the way they did before the Israeli takeover of the Golan.

SPEAKER:  Before 1967, no one paid any attention to Ghajar.  They didn’t care.  Now everyone is interested in our destiny.

SCHACHTER:  Everyone’s interested because Ghajar is at the center of a fight among Israel, Lebanon and the United Nations.  The village was part of Syria.  Israel occupied the village in the Golan Heights after the 1967 war and eventually annexed the Golan in 1981.  So Ghajar should theoretically be occupied Syrian territory but it’s not that simple.  This man stands on a promenade at the center of Ghajar.  He gestures at the valley that would seem to mark the boundary between Israel and Lebanon.  He says the situation here is complicated but the solution is simple.  Don’t divide the village.

SPEAKER:  The most important issue to me is to stay in my land.  If Lebanon wants to control us, under one condition, to stay and to keep our land.  If Syria wants to keep us, we ask for the same condition.  The second priority is to worry about who’s controlling me because you can get along with any country today.

SCHACHTER:  The problem is what constitutes his land.  No one disputes that Ghajar is originally Syrian but the village has overflowed its original boundaries.  A U.N. survey in 2000 confirmed that the northern part of the village was in Lebanon.  Beirut assumed control of that part and Israel retained control of the southern part, which is in the Golan Heights.  Israel retook the Lebanese section of the village in the 2006 war against Hezbollah.  Israel, Lebanon and the U.N. are currently negotiating a deal that would divide the village again.  The villagers worry about what that would look like.  Najib Al Khatib is Ghajar’s spokesman.  He stands at the end of a street that splits the village between north and south.  Al Khatib is concerned that the street could become a de facto border.

NAJIB AL KHATIB:  The public facilities are all in the southern part of the village, the school, the mosque, the cemetery, the clinic.  If the U.N. separates the village, how will the kids get to school every day?  How will mothers go to the clinic?  Isn’t one checkpoint, the Israeli one at the entrance to the village, enough?  No one is asking us what we want and no one is telling us anything.

SCHACHTER:  But locals rarely have a say when it comes to international diplomacy and published reports say an agreement among the three parties is imminent.  Ayub Kara is Israel’s deputy minister for the development of the Negev in Galilee, the ministry negotiating the deal.  He says the Israeli government is caving in to U.S. pressure, even though it considers the whole affair stupid.  Kara says the deal would be a huge security risk for Israel.

AYUB KARA:  The United Nations must give now answer if they could defend the south village so we have a big problem from the side of difference of Israel so we’re waiting.

SCHACHTER:  Kara chuckles when I ask him whether the U.N. is up to the job.  Israel has lambasted U.N. troops in South Lebanon for allowing Hezbollah to rearm since the 2006 war and it’s not just Israel that’s worried about Hezbollah.  A group of restaurants sits in a small strip mall just outside the Israeli city of Kiryat Shemona.  A young man from Ghajar runs a falafel shop a few doors down from a McDonalds.  Like many here, he considers himself Syrian but also like many, he’d rather stay Israeli.  The man says I’ve only heard stories about Syria but I know the economy here is much better than it is there but the man will only hint that is that he and other villagers worry about how Hezbollah might treat them as Israeli citizens.  But the suspicion goes both ways.  The border between Ghajar and Lebanon has become a haven for smugglers and Hezbollah fears a crossing spot for Israeli spies.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, Ghajar, the Golan Heights.

WERMAN:  You can take a tour of the village on our website.  Aaron sent us a narrated slide show.  It’s all at TheWorld.org.

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