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To: Moominoid who wrote (54326)	8/4/2006 11:21:00 PM
From: regli	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

There seem to be reasonable grounds for dispute. The Wikipedia article lays it out quite nicely: en.wikipedia.org "Origins The dispute over the sovereignty of the Shebaa Farms resulted in part from the failure of the French Mandate administrations, and subsequently the Lebanese and Syrian governments, to properly demarcate the border between Lebanon and Syria. Documents from the 1920s and 1930s indicate that some local inhabitants regarded themselves as part of Lebanon, for example paying taxes to the Lebanese government, but that French officials often expressed confusion on the question of actual location of the border.[2] One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future. The region was demarcated in the 1930s as Syrian territory, under the French mandate. Detailed maps showing the border were produced by the French in 1933, and again in 1945, "Beyrouth" 1:200,000 sheet NI36-XII available in the U.S. Library of Congress and French archives. They clearly showed the region to be in Syria. Following France's exit from the region, the land was administered by Syria, and represented as such in all historical maps of the time. [3] But the commission responsible for demarcating the border in the decades after the French mandate ended in 1946 did not act decisively to delimit or demarcate this area. Border disputes arose frequently. Starting in the late 1950s and ending in 1964, Syria and Lebanon formed a joint council to determine a proper border between the two nations. Shebaa Farms was not unique, as several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership. In 1964 a joint Lebanese-Syrian border committee suggested to their governments that the Shebaa Farms area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion. However, its suggestion was not adopted by Syria or Lebanon, and the countries did not take any actions along the suggested lines. Thus, the maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria. [3] Even maps of both the Syrian and Lebanese armies continued to demarcate the region within Syrian territory. [3] A Lebanese military map, published in 1966, showing the Shebaa Farms as being on the Syrian side of the border. Enlarge A Lebanese military map, published in 1966, showing the Shebaa Farms as being on the Syrian side of the border. A number of local residents regarded themselves as Lebanese, however. The Lebanese government showed little interest in their views. The Syrian government imposed itself on the region, at one point forcibly replacing villagers' Lebanese identity cards with Syrian ones. On the eve of the 1967 war, the region was under effective Syrian control. In 1967 most Shebaa Farms landowners and farmers (Lebanese) lived outside the Syrian-controlled region, across the Lebanon-Syrian border, in the Lebanese village of Shebaa. During the Six Day War, Israel captured the region from Syria. After Syria lost the land (to the Israelis) in 1967, the Lebanese land owners were no longer able to farm it.[4][5]"