[ad_1]
Muhammad Choucair wrote in “Asharq Al-Awsat”:
The Banque du Liban’s insistence on lifting fuel subsidies, starting early next year, opens the door to the question of the fate of the Lebanese regime’s attempts in Syria to demarcate the common border between the two countries. along 357 kilometers, which was put on the table for the first time in public at the first National Dialogue Conference hosted by the President of Parliament, Nabih Berri, in April 2006 without receiving a response from Damascus, despite the fact that the Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who participated in the conference, promised to communicate with Syrian leaders, on the condition that the phrase demarcating the borders be replaced. Defining it as this problem related to two sister states and not in conflict.
However, the demarcation of the borders remained stagnant, although a mixed committee was formed and entrusted with the task of delimiting the borders, and ink remained on paper, and it was required to reactivate it with the formation of a new committee. Al-Sharq al-Awsat learned that the issue of demarcation or delimitation of the borders between Lebanon and Syria remained unresolved until it was decided to move it in the wake of then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri to visit Damascus in 2010 in response. to the mediation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Consequently, the Minister of Administrative Development, Jean Ogasbian, was then assigned the task of preparing the second visit that Hariri made at the head of a ministerial and administrative delegation that included 12 ministers, during which he met with his counterpart. Syrian Muhammad Naji Al-Atri and interested Syrian ministers, and the meeting ended with the signing of 28 agreements, including those agreed. Amendments at the request of the Lebanese side.
Shebaa farms
However, the preparation for this visit did not note, due to the urgency of the Syrian side, the reactivation of the joint committee to demarcate the borders between the two countries, including the occupied Shebaa farms, which are governed by Resolutions 242 and 338 issued by the UN Security Council after the June 1967 war, although Ogaspian made all preparations, starting with the formation of the Lebanese delegation and going through the preparation of all documents, evidence and documents that are in possession of the Lebanese government from the government of the Ottoman Sultanate to the French Mandate, are supported by aerial maps of the border areas prepared by the Lebanese Army Command.
The Syrian side, represented by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, cited his request to postpone the discussion on the border demarcation file, that Damascus is currently busy demarcating the Syrian-Jordanian border and that the time factor does not allow the Syrian-Lebanese committee to meet, plus Al-Muallem suggested that the Shebaa farms should not be included in the process. Demarcation.
It was agreed that the joint committee would start its work as soon as the demarcation of the Jordanian-Syrian border was completed, provided that the demarcation process started from the northern borders towards the overlapping areas.
However, Damascus has so far refrained from delineating the common borders between the two countries, and the only meetings that were held during Hariri’s assumption of prime minister and before the “March 8 forces” allied with the “Free Patriotic Movement” decided to overthrow their government, in conjunction with their meeting with US President Barack Obama at home. Al-Abyadh was limited to two meetings, the first between the governor of the north and his Syrian counterpart, the governor of Tartous, and the second between the governor of Bekaa and his Syrian counterpart, the governor of Homs.
These two meetings were devoted to examining the real estate conflict resulting from the existing overlap between Syrian and Lebanese lands, while Damascus refuses to discuss the demarcation of the borders, and this is what Minister Al-Moallem recently confirmed in his response. to the demand of the international community, and through it the International Fund, that the smuggling from Lebanon to Syria must be controlled and closed. Illegal crossings that lead to the demarcation of the border between the two countries.
Therefore, Damascus insists on keeping the Shebaa Farms card and refuses to give it up mainly because it is attached to international resolutions on Lebanon, and this requires it to reach an agreement with the Lebanese government to register it with the United Nations for eliminate the farms of Resolutions 242 and 338 and legally annex them to Lebanon, especially from the ownership of their lands. Lebanese, but subject to Syrian sovereignty. Thus, Damascus foresees, by not approving it in the first place, nor in form, in the Lebanese farms, to reserve a seat to use it in its negotiations with Israel in case it is decided to return to it with international support.
Fuel smuggling
Therefore, the issue of the demarcation of the Syrian-Lebanese borders was not raised simultaneously with the preparations for the start of the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations to demarcate the maritime and land borders between the two countries under the auspices of the United Nations and with American mediation, but was raised again in light of the increasing smuggling of fuel from Lebanon to Syria, and the amount smuggled nearly depleted the Lebanese treasury. Through the Banque du Liban, which is studying the elimination of subsidies for petroleum derivatives because their continuation has become a service for organized smuggling operations due to the lack of capacity to stop them, and in the absence of coverage of the political forces present in the north of the Bekaa to be used to deter smugglers who reap huge profits, because the plate of gasoline smuggled into Syria is sold five times. Subsidized price in Lebanon.
In this context, Al-Sharq al-Awsat learned that there are local parties in the area sponsoring smuggling to circumvent the “Caesar Law”, so Damascus has no interest in demarcation of borders or cooperating with the Lebanese authorities to curb organized smuggling operations, since smuggling lines constitute the lung from which the regime breathes. In Syria.
The question remains, how will the political forces, led by Hezbollah, act should it be decided to lift support, and that the alternative at the present time is to subject the supply of areas used for fuel smuggling to Syria to a studied rationing that ensures their need for petroleum derivatives? What are the reasons that prevent the party from intervening to maintain this support, taking into account the conditions of millions of Lebanese, more than half of whom live below the poverty line and suffer economic difficulties and cannot bear any more? charges to appease the state’s “protectorate” of smugglers that stretches from the Hermel Hills to short Sirius?
[ad_2]
