page_title: Borders of Israel
section_title: Conflict over the Shebaa Farms
hierarchical_section_title: Borders of Israel / Border with Syria and Lebanon / Conflict over the Shebaa Farms
caption_attribution_description: This is an English-language modified version of Image:Schebaa-Farmen.jpg, which is in German. The original was produced by de:User:Kandro, it was translated by User:Garzo and modified by User:Kaveh.
context_page_description: The current borders of the State of Israel are the result both of war and of diplomatic agreements among Israel, her neighbors, and colonial powers. Only two of Israel's five potential land borders are internationally recognized while the other three are disputed. Israel's borders with Egypt and Jordan have now been formally recognized and confirmed as part of the peace treaties with those countries. The borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories are still in dispute.
  According to the Green Line of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Israel borders Lebanon in the north, the Golan Heights and Syria in the northeast, the West Bank and Jordan in the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt in the southwest. The border with Egypt is the international border demarcated in 1906 between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, confirmed in the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, and the border with Jordan is based on the border defined in the 1922 Trans-Jordan memorandum, confirmed in the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty.
context_section_description: The Shebaa Farms conflict stems from Israel's occupation and annexation of the Golan Heights, with respect to that territory's border with Lebanon. Both Lebanon and Syria were within the French Mandate Territory between 1920 and the end of the French Mandate in 1946.  The dispute over the sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms resulted in part from the failure of French Mandate administrations, and subsequently from the failure of the Lebanon and Syria to properly demarcate the border between them.
  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 French officials at times expressed confusion as to the actual location of the border. One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future.
  The region continued to be represented in the 1930s and 1940s as Syrian territory, under the French Mandate.  Detailed maps showing the border were produced by the French in 1933, and again in 1945. They clearly showed the region to be in Syria.
  After the French Mandate ended in 1946, the land was administered by Syria, and represented as such in all maps of the time. The maps of the 1949 armistice agreement between Syria and Israel also designated the area as Syrian.
  Border disputes arose at times, however.  Shebaa Farms was not unique; several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership.  Syria and Lebanon formed a joint Syrian–Lebanese border committee in the late 1950s to determine a proper border between the two nations.  In 1964, concluding its work, the committee suggested to the two governments that the area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion.  However, neither Syria nor Lebanon adopted the committee's suggestion, and neither country took any action along the suggested lines.  Thus, maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria.  Even maps of both the Syrian and Lebanese armies continued to demarcate the region within Syrian territory (see map).
  A number of local residents regarded themselves as Lebanese, however. The Lebanese government showed little interest in their views.  The Syrian government administered the region, and on the eve of the 1967 war, the region was under effective Syrian control.
  In 1967, most Shebaa Farms landowners and (Lebanese) farmers lived outside the Syrian-controlled region, across the Lebanon-Syrian border, in the Lebanese village of Shebaa.  During the Six Day War in 1967, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, including the Shebaa Farms area.  As a consequence, the Lebanese landowners were no longer able to farm it.
caption: Map of the Shebaa Farms
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "800", "Image ImageLength": "1220", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2015:07:10 15:02:38", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "386", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6133", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1220"}