26 July 2006

Lebanon has a valid claim to Shaba Farms...

... according to a report by Akiva Eldar, diplomatic affairs analyst, that appeared in Haaretz, some time ago.

In this report entitled "During the French Mandate, Shaba was Lebanese", Akiva Eldar described how an Israeli academic, Dr. Asher Kaufman from the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University went "to the archives and Cartographic Institute in Paris, where he found documents that buttress Lebanon's claims to the land."

In a follow-up piece (the Google cache linked has now disappeared), Akiva Eldar further stated:

"The maps and documents Kaufman found in Paris archives show that French officers in the 1930s realized their maps mistakenly put Shaba on the Syrian side of the border. Administrative documents from the same period show that the farms were listed as being in the Lebanese districts of Hazbayieh or Marjayoun. The French officers proposed correcting the maps that they said were prepared negligently, without surveyors or professional equipment.
But nothing was done to correct the mistake and the error was handed down from generation to generation, government to government."

"It's likely that if the Lebanese or Syrians had reached the archives in Paris in time, and presented the evidence that Kaufman found, the UN's decision on 425 would look very different."

All the UN Resolutions were therefore based on incorrect information and as such should be revisited.

No comments: