Ghajar residents protest division
Photo: Avihu Shapira
Ghajar residents: Village must stay intact
Foreign ministry director general visits village at Israel's northern border with Lebanon to hear residents' position on reports of impending division. 'Families will be torn apart,' village spokesman says
In the wake of reports of an impending Israeli withdrawal from the northern part of the village of Ghajar on the Israel-Lebanon border, Foreign Ministry Director-General Yossi Gal and other officials from his office visited the village on Tuesday.
Ghajar Council spokesman Najib Khatib told Ynet after the meeting: "The meeting lasted for some two hours, during which we outlined to the Foreign Ministry director-general all the difficulties we are about to be facing if the government of Israel gives the northern part of the village back to Lebanon.
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"We are talking about families being torn apart, parents being separated from their children, some siblings will be living in the northern part while others will be in the southern part. Some 1,700 out of the 2,200 residents are slated to become refugees in Lebanon, while the 500 remaining will be giving up some 11,000 dunams of agricultural land that belongs to all the residents."
During the meeting, the village's representatives brought to Gal's attention the issue of education in the village. Ghajar's school currently educates some 600 students from grades one to 12, and is located in south of the village.
"Hundreds of students, most of which live in the northern part of the village, will have to pass difficult security checks twice a day on their way to and from school. This is unheard of. In order to shop in the supermarket, they will have to pass a UNIFIL checkpoint.
"The director-general told us there were ways to find a solution with UNIFIL, but we responded saying the village must remain intact, either under Israeli sovereignty, or be transferred entirely, including the agricultural lands, to Lebanon to enable the residents to keep earning their livelihood."
At the end of the meeting, in which the residents' representatives presented Gal with documents, the latter promised to keep them updated. The village's representatives thanked Gal for his visit and for allowing them to voice their position, as they did to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his visit to the village several weeks ago.
Khatib said, "We just want to be treated like human beings and be giving the option of knowing what is about to happen to us, and not hear about it, as always, through the media."
It should be noted that Lebanese media recently reported that an agreement was reached, according to which Israel is to transfer control over the northern part of the village to UNIFIL by the end of January, as party of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which was passed at the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
