Damascus: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN chief on Monday of an Israeli plan to withdraw troops from part of a disputed village along the Lebanese border and hand over control to a UN peacekeeping force, an Israeli official said.
Netanyahu informed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the planned move during talks at the UN headquarters in New York, the Israeli leader's spokesman Mark Regev said.
"The prime minister said that he intends to convene the security cabinet upon his return to Israel in order to approve an arrangement regarding Ghajar, based among other things on Israel's discussions with Unifil," Netanyahu's spokesman said after the Ban meeting.
Plans to withdraw from the northern sector of Ghajar have been discussed with senior officials from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), which is deployed along the border with Israel.
Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and director for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma told Gulf News: "There is no winner in Netanyahu's withdrawal — only more turmoil. Only an internationally-recognised solution to the entire Golan issue can help restore the lives of the region's residents to normalcy and security in the future."
He added: "Netanyahu will put Ghajar on the table when he visits Obama this week in exchange for a settlement [colony] freeze and progress on the peace process with either the Palestinian or Syrian front.
"If Obama accepts this offering in lieu of a real peace process it will be a defeat for all who hoped for a permanent and just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict." The village lies on the border of Lebanon, Syria and the Golan Heights which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981.
Pressure to withdraw
Unifil has been pressing Israel to withdraw from Ghajar in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah.
Northern Ghajar is in Lebanon and the rest lies in the Golan Heights, but Israel took over the Lebanese half during the 2006 war.
The villagers of southern Ghajar were Syrian nationals when Israel occupied the region but they took Israeli nationality after the Golan annexation, a move not recognised by the international community.
Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar has hailed the planned pullout and said it should extend to other areas of dispute along the border such as Kfar Shuba and the Sheba'a Farms.
— With inputs from AFP
