Hezbollah refuses to remove posts set up on Israeli side of border with Lebanon

Mohammad Raad, head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc (Hezbollah’s political wing), announced Saturday that Hezbollah would not be removing two tents placed on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, according to Lebanese media.

For the past two months, Hezbollah fighters have been manning two tents placed on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, the ceasefire line and border with Lebanon, established after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. 

The specific area in question is called Mount Dov in Israel, for the IDF officer killed there in 1970, and called Shaba farms in Lebanon. The area was part of the Syrian Golan Heights before the Six-Day War, and had Israeli law extended to it along with the rest of the Golan Heights, in 1981.

Jerusalem wanted diplomacy

The government had preferred that the dispute be handled diplomatically by the UN  in order to avoid escalation in the northern sector, so it had asked the UN to apply pressure on Lebanon and also Hezbollah to remove the tents.

The IDF also stated that the tents were not a threat to national security.

According to the request, “Unless Hezbollah evacuates the two sites, the Israeli army will itself take the initiative to evacuate them by force, after two weeks of mediation by European capitals in contact with Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

Head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Mohamed Raad gestures as he talks at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon July 26, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED AZAKIR)

“Israel has been talking a lot about the two tents on the border for a month, and they consider that they have been placed at an advanced point on the Blue Line, according to their interpretation. Israel requests that these two tents be removed and that Israel prefers that the resistance remove them, because if the Israeli enemy wants that, war will occur and Israel does not want it,” said Raad at a memorial ceremony held in the town of Marwaniya.

The two tents were erected on Mount Dov, where there is no border fence, most of which is marked by rocks and barrels.

The mountain area where there are no Israeli settlements is actually what is called an Israeli enclave with several IDF outposts. The area is on constant alert and the army operates in the area regularly in order to thwart attempts to penetrate into Israeli territory.

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