Shebaa Farms

A border nobody drew

After the First World War, France governed both Lebanon and Syria under League of Nations mandates. French maps of the general border appeared to put the Shebaa Farms in Syria, but the line was never surveyed or written down. In practice the farms’ owners were Lebanese citizens who dealt with Lebanese officials.^[1]

Lebanon and Syria did not agree a formal boundary after independence either. In 2000 the UN Secretary-General found “no official record of a formal international boundary agreement” between them for this stretch.^[3] The farms are about 14 farmsteads between the Asal valley and the line most maps show as the Lebanon–Syria border.^[2]

1967 and the fence

When Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, it treated the Shebaa Farms as part of the Golan and occupied them. A fence built in the early 1970s cut the Lebanese owners off from their land for the first time.^[1] Shebaa’s residents told reporters their families had farmed there for over 200 years; Israel reportedly let them harvest at first every two years, then withdrew that permission in the 1970s.^[2]

In 1974 a disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria set up the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) on the Golan. Its maps, initialled by both countries, placed the farms inside UNDOF’s area.^[3] The UN force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, created in 1978, was given southern Lebanon, which left the farms outside its area.^[2]

The Blue Line, 2000

In 2000 Israel prepared to pull out of southern Lebanon. On 4 May, weeks before it left, Lebanon told the UN that it would claim farmlands in the Shebaa area as part of the land Israel had to leave. It sent title deeds, papers showing Lebanese state and religious bodies had held jurisdiction there, and word of a joint Lebanese–Syrian committee that had found the area Lebanese in 1964. Syria’s foreign minister told the Secretary-General that Syria backed the claim.^[3]

The UN weighed this against other evidence. It held 10 maps issued after 1966 by Lebanese bodies, including the army and defence ministry, and six Syrian government maps, and all of them put the farms in Syria. Because the farms already lay in UNDOF’s area, the Secretary-General reasoned, they could never have been part of UNIFIL’s. He added that they were in any case land Israel had held since 1967, covered by the Security Council’s calls for withdrawal.^[3]

So the UN used the old line between the two peacekeeping areas as the withdrawal line in this sector, which left the farms on the Golan side.^[2] On 16 June 2000 the Secretary-General confirmed that Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon. Lebanon replied that the farms were Lebanese; the UN said its line was “without prejudice to future border agreements”.^[6] Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, said the farms would not be evacuated.^[2]

Still unsettled

In August 2006, calling for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Security Council resolution 1701 asked the Secretary-General for proposals on Lebanon’s borders, “including by dealing with the Shebaa farms area”.^[7] A UN senior cartographer studied Lebanon’s archives and visited the area. In October 2007 the UN published his provisional definition of the farms: from a turning point of the 1920 French line, along a 1946 village boundary to the Wadi al-Aasal, and up that valley to the mountain crest. The UN stressed it was not drawing a border.^[4]

By 2008 there was no progress. Lebanon stood by its proposal, Israel said the question was one for Lebanon and Syria, and Syria said it would demarcate the border there only after Israel withdrew.^[8] Hezbollah, which cites the farms as Lebanese land, set up two tents there in June 2023.^[1] In August 2025 an Israeli broadcaster reported that Israel had studied handing the farms to Syria in a deal over the Golan; Syria and Israel’s prime minister’s office both denied it.^[5]