Hezbollah claims northern Israel for Lebanon

Obviously, there will be no end to Hezbollah's imaginative territorial demands. Since the blue line was the agreed border in 1949, and since the UN ratified both the 1949 armistice and the 2000 withdrawal, it is apparent that Arab states will use "international legitimacy" when it suits them, and ignore it when it doesn't suit them.

 

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Last update - 09:49 04/11/2008    

 

 Hezbollah: Large swaths of north Israel belong to Lebanon

 

 By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

A senior Hezbollah official on Monday said the Lebanese militant organization believes that large swaths of northern Israel belong to Lebanon, far beyond the line Israel pulled back to in 2000.

 

"The Zionist terror organizations moved the border from that of 1920 to that of 1923, and Lebanon lost seven villages and twenty farms. One must be cautious before moving the border to the Blue Line, because then Lebanon will lose millions of square meters," said Nawaf Musawi, head of international relations for Hezbollah.

 

In referring to the Blue Line, Musawi was speaking of border demarcation the United Nations published in 2000 after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.

 

Musawi, who is known as the group's "foreign minister," made the comments at the close of a meeting with the Norwegian ambassador to Lebanon.

 

He branded Blue Line, which runs very close to the 1949 Israel-Lebanon border known as the Green Line, as merely a "withdrawal line."

 

The official's comments mean that Hezbollah has territorial demands beyond the disputed Shaba Farms in the Golan Heights and the divided northern village of Ghajar. While various Lebanese Shi'ite figures have made these demands in the past, Hezbollah has abstained from doing so in recent years.