Overall Chronology

The border between Lebanon and occupied Palestine has gone through several historical phases since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The lines of the border shifted significantly, and areas on one side shrank at the expense of the other, especially during the Mandate period, when neither Lebanon nor Palestine had any say in the matter. These changes in the border would not have taken place had it not been for the Mandate authorities’ bias and the international community’s bias in favor of Israel.

The Ottoman Administrative Divisions on the Eve of World War I

After the Ottoman victory over the Mamluk in 1516 in the Battle of Marj Dabiq  and during the four centuries of Ottoman rule, the administrative divisions of the geographical region that now comprises Lebanon and Palestine were changed several times. The final change took place at the end of the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Vilayet of Beirut was established in 1888. This vilayet included the entire coastal region extending from Lattakieh to the northern port of Jaffa . In addition to the city of Beirut and the two districts (sanjaqs) of Lattakieh and Tripoli , it included the sanjaqs of Beirut , Acre , and Nablus . The Beirut sanjaq included the sub-districts (qadas) of Saida , Tyre and Marja'uyun , while the sanjaq of Acre consisted of the qadas of Acre , Nazareth , Tiberias , and Safad .

The boundary line between the sanjaq of Acre and the sanjaq of Beirut extended from west to east, starting from Ra's al-Naqura on the Mediterranean coast until the western edge of the Lake Hula . A three-way intersection point marked the boundaries between the two sanjaqs and the Sanjaq of Hauran  in the Vilayet of Syria . In practical terms, the qada of Acre stood opposite the qada of Tyre, and likewise the qadas of Safad and Marja'uyun. These administrative divisions made by the Ottoman Empire within the newly created vilayet of Beirut remained in place until World War I . Then, the Ottomans abolished the Beirut vilayet and the [semi-autonomous] Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon , placing them under the direct control of the Ottoman army, which is how they remained until the end of the war in 1918.

Between 1916, when the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed, and 1923, when the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement was reached, what would become the border between Palestine and Greater Lebanon went through stages of complexity and uncertainty, due to the competition for influence between France and Britain on the one hand and the ambitions of Zionist movements on the other, as well as the difficulty to access some unpublished Franco-British agreements.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was initially a secret arrangement between Great Britain and France signed in May 1916, with the approval of Russia , to prepare for the dividing up of the Arab region, known as the Fertile Crescent , after the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, into spheres of influence. The content of the agreement can be summed up as follows: Cilicia  and the coastal regions of [present-day] Syria and Lebanon were to fall directly under French influence (shown in blue on an accompanying map illustrating the division of influence); and the region of Baghdad and Basra was to come under British influence (shown in red). Palestine (brown) was to be placed under international supervision, with the exception of Acre and Haifa , which were to be placed under direct British control. France was to be given “priority of right of enterprise” (i.e. potential investments) in an area marked (A) on the map, which included Mosul and present-day Syria, while Britain was given similar priority for investments in area (B), which included northern Iraq and the present-day Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan . It is notable that the boundaries separating these areas were drawn with thick lines on the map, which was drawn to a very small scale (1:2,000,000), which made it impossible to track the precise location of these boundaries. This caused debate and led to renegotiations between Britain and France at later stages.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement demarcated to a large extent the border between what was to become Greater Lebanon and Palestine with a line running from west to east, with a slight bend toward the north, starting from al-Zib south of Ra's al-Naqura until a point south of Ayn Ebel , and then a more significant bend to the southeast until the western edge of Lake Tiberias , specifically at the starting point of the Jordan River at this lake. Accordingly, the Hula Valley and the greater part of Lake Tiberias were included within the boundaries of the area intended to be subject to direct French control.

The agreement thus made the new borders it demarcated align only partially with those of the Ottoman administrative divisions. It appears that it roughly adhered to the boundaries of the Ottoman qada of Tyre, from Ra's al-Naqura – al-Zib up to the south of Ayn Ebel. However, it disregarded the boundary between the qadas of Marja'uyun and Safad, and pushed the line southward, from the western part of Hula Lake up to the southern tip of Lake Tiberias. This adjustment was made at the expense of the greater part of the Safad qada and part of the Tiberias qada (which both belonged to the sanjaq of Acre), which were colored in blue.

Anglo–French Division of Military Control

On 23 October 1918, after British forces completed their occupation of the Arab territories that were part of the Ottoman Empire, and since the French contribution to the war effort in those areas was marginal, General Edmund Allenby imposed what he called “guidelines” on the French side for the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA). According to his guidelines, these territories were divided into three zones: a southern zone, OETA-South (Palestine); a northern zone, OETA-North (renamed OETA-West the following month); and an eastern zone, OETA-East (the British “Hashemite” zone). As for OETA-West, Allenby set its boundaries to make its area correspond to the zone colored blue in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He excluded from it parts of the Safad and Tiberias qadas that had been colored blue by Sykes-Picot (as well as the qadas of Baalbek , Hasbayya , and Rashayya ). In other words, he returned the sanjaq of Acre in its entirety to Palestine. Although the British claimed at the time that this division was a purely military one, its political impact would become clear later, at least in part.

In fall 1919, British forces withdrew completely from Syria in the direction of OETA-South. Meanwhile, France had strengthened its military presence in OETA-West, enabling its forces to advance to the [boundary] line running from Ra's al-Naqura to the Hula Valley, in consensus between General Allenby and the French High Commissioner, General Henri Gouraud . However, this did not necessarily mean a full deployment by both sides along the entirety of the line. During this period, diplomatic negotiations were progressing to give France the mandate over Syria, including [present-day] Lebanon, and to grant Britain the mandate over Palestine, including Transjordan , while incorporating the Balfour Declaration into the British Mandate. This was formalized at the San Remo Conference in April 1920. However, negotiations regarding the whole of the Lebanese-Palestinian border were stalling due to Zionist demands, which were backed by the British. Some of these demands concerned control over the entire area south of the Litani River and the sources of the Jordan River; other demands were related to the ability of the proposed Jewish national homeland in Palestine to accommodate all of the pre-existing Jewish colonies in the north, such as Metula . The French initially refused to settle for anything less than what had been granted to them by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but by June 1920 they had conceded that the pre-existing Jewish colonies that were north of the Ra's al-Naqura–Hula boundary would remain within [British-mandate] Palestine.

The Borders of Greater Lebanon

Drawing legitimacy from the decisions taken at the San Remo Conference, France completed its military control over Syria at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920. After that, General Gouraud was then able to use his powers to issue an arrêté, or decree, on 31 August—Decree No. 318—proclaiming the establishment of the state of le Grand Liban (Greater Lebanon). Article 1, section 3(a) stipulated that the southern part of Greater Lebanon was to include "the sanjaq of Saida [the Beirut sanjaq in the official Ottoman nomenclature], except for what of it was annexed to Palestine in accordance with international agreements." Article 2 stated that the southern border of Lebanon would be "its border with Palestine as will be delineated by international agreements." The decree intended to consolidate the state of affairs as they had come to be on the ground and had two important implications: (a) it acknowledged that Greater Lebanon was not to include in its southern region lands that had been included in the sphere of direct French influence according to the Sykes-Picot Agreement; and (b) by referring to “international agreements”, once in the past tense and once in the future tense, it acknowledged the absence of solid terms of reference and made a part of the Lebanese-Palestinian border subject to future bargaining between France on the one hand and Britain and the Zionist Movement behind it on the other.

Toward the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement

The pace of Franco-British negotiations over the borders quickened after September 1920 and culminated in an agreement on 23 December that delineated the borders of the French Mandate over Lebanon and Syria on one side and the British Mandate over Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq on the other. Since the negotiations took place in London and Paris , the agreement sufficed to simply list the locations, towns, and routes that would constitute the border without illustrating them on a map. Article 2 of the agreement stipulated the creation of a commission within three months whose task it would be to demarcate the borders on the ground.

The commission, headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Francis Newcombe from Britain and Lt-Col. N. (Maurice) Paulet from France, began its work on 1 June 1921. On 3 February 1922, the officers signed off on their final report for setting the borders between Greater Lebanon and Syria on one side and Palestine on the other. On 7 March 1923, the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement was drawn up under the official title of the "Agreement between His Majesty's Government and the French Government respecting the Boundary Line between Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean to El Hammé " and was registered with the League of Nations on 6 February 1924.

The demarcation comprised the marking of 71 geographical points starting from the Mediterranean coast until the town of al-Hamma to delineate the border between Lebanon and Palestine and Syria and Palestine-Transjordan. Out of 71 points, 38 points were concentrated on delineating Lebanon from Palestine, so that the Lebanese-Palestinian border extended from the Ra's al-Naqura rock formation in the west until the ancient Roman bridge on the Wazzani River . Although France succeeded in having Greater Lebanon preserve its territory within a line extending from Ra's al-Naqura in the west until southern Aitaroun in the east, it agreed to have taken away from its mandate the areas that were supposed to have been part of the French sphere of direct influence in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. These were sections of the Ottoman qadas of Tiberias, Safad, and Marja'uyun, in that order. These sections were represented in the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement in a bulge that was called “the Finger of the Galilee” [now referred to as the Galilee Panhandle ], that included Lake Tiberias, the Hula Valley and its lake, and a portion of the Lebanese and Syrian tributaries of these two lakes, reaching up to the source of the Wazzani River. The area of ​​the land torn out from the Ottoman-era qada of Marja'uyun for the “finger” is estimated to span around 74 square kilometers.

The “Seven Villages” and the Good Neighbors Agreement

On 9 March 1921, a few weeks after the initial agreement on the borders, the French High Commissioner issued Decree No. 763, which ordered a census to be taken of the Greater Lebanon region, most likely deriving legitimacy for it from this agreement. Subsequently, on 10 March 1922, he issued Decree No. 1307, which proclaimed as Lebanese nationals everyone who was registered as Lebanese in the census records. However, after the border demarcation was completed, the residents of seven villages, who had been surveyed and registered in the Lebanese census records, found themselves on the Palestinian side of the border. One of these villages was Tayr Bikha (or Tarbikha), which had been part of the Tyre qada during the Ottoman era. The other six villages—Abil al-Qamh , Hunin , al-Nabi Yusha' , Qadas , al-Malikiyya al-Jabal , and Saliha —were located in the qada of Marja'uyun.

This situation arose from the fact that the topographical survey conducted by negotiators and technicians from both sides was not grounded solely on what was stipulated in the December 1920 agreement. It was also influenced by mutual pressure from both sides and subjected to Zionist interference at every stage. From a practical point of view, the final demarcation amended some of what had been stated in the 1920 agreement; concerning the border between Lebanon and Palestine, more land was taken away from the former to be annexed to the Galilee Panhandle. In addition to the consequences this had for the residents of these seven villages, the final demarcation resulted in agricultural lands that belonged to one or another of these villages now falling on the other side of the border.

Despite the ratification of the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement, the British, under pressure from the Zionist movements, continued to drag their feet in implementing it. This eventually led to another agreement to amend the Paulet–Newcombe boundaries, known as the "Good Neighbors Agreement ," which was officially signed by both Mandate powers in Jerusalem on 2 February 1926. This agreement formalized the taking of Lebanese lands in the Hula Valley, the Galilee Panhandle, and the seven villages, and including them in Palestine. The agreement also adopted practical measures that were to be taken to placate the anger of the residents of these lands who were now cut off from their means of livelihood, grazing areas for their livestock, their sources of water, and even their waqfs (fixed religious endowments) by this arbitrary and unjust new border. The League of Nations ratified the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement in 1934, and these boundaries now became officially designated as the internationally recognized border between Lebanon and Palestine.

In overall terms, the outcome of the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement and its subsequent amendments was to shrink the total area of ​​Lebanon, from 12,000 square kilometers (as can be deduced from the Sykes-Picot map) to its current area of ​​10,452 square kilometers according to the estimates of many scholars and historians. As for the inhabitants of the “Seven Villages,” Zionist militias forcibly displaced them to Lebanon, and their villages were destroyed in the year of the Nakba , as were hundreds of Palestinian villages during that time. In 1994, a decree signed by Lebanese president Elias Hrawi restored Lebanese citizenship to the people who belonged to the Seven Villages.

The Lebanese-Israeli Armistice Agreement of 1949

After the 1948 War , Lebanon and Israel signed an armistice agreement on 23 March 1949. Lebanon wanted to ensure that the armistice line should adhere to the internationally recognized border, as outlined in the first clause of Article 5 of the agreement: "The armistice Demarcation Line shall follow the international border between Lebanon and Palestine." This meant that it should adhere to the border line demarcated and fixed by the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement. The armistice agreement was accompanied by a map, along with a list of coordinates of 143 boundary points, which included the Paulet–Newcombe border points, along with additional intermediate points to enhance the precision of the border demarcation.

However, the Armistice Line of 1949 did not match the 1923 border line; it took away land from the towns and villages of South Lebanon that were adjacent to the border. Some experts attributed this discrepancy to Lebanon’s use of French maps (which used the technique of relief shading to represent the features of the terrain), while the Israelis used British maps (which relied on contour, or topographic lines). Other contributing causes included the reality on the ground and the inaccuracy of the Paulet–Newcombe line, all of which meant that, ultimately, Lebanon lost around 16 square kilometers of territory [out of Paulet–Newcombe] from the demarcation of the armistice line in 1949. Lebanon’s official position is that the Armistice Line of 1949 marks its southern border with occupied Palestine.

The Blue Line

After Israel withdrew on 25 May 2000, the United Nations established a boundary line to ascertain Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanon, known as the "Blue Line " since it was drawn in blue on maps. The Lebanese government recognized this line as a withdrawal line for the Israeli army and not as the international border, but it also expressed its reservations about this line. The reservations have to do with areas belonging to southern Lebanese villages and towns adjacent to the border with occupied Palestine, taking the Armistice Line demarcated in 1949 as the standard boundary to be adhered to. The areas referred to in Lebanon’s reservations are located next to the following villages, from west to east:

- Ra's al-Naqura

- Alma al-Shaab (three reservations)

- al-Bustan

- Marwahin

- Rmeish

- Yaroun - Maroun al-Ras

- Blida

- Mais al-Jabal

- Adayseh

- Adayseh - Kfar Kila

- Metula-Wazzani

These thirteen reservations cover a net area of approximately 500,000 square meters. This excludes the still occupied lands in the Shebaa Farms and the Lebanese village of al-Mari , which is on the Lebanese side of the border with the Syrian village of Ghajar in the occupied Golan Heights .

Conclusion

If the Sykes-Picot Agreement was the reference point by which the border lines between countries in the Near East region were set over a century ago, then the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement that subsequently followed can be considered to have been very unfair to Lebanon. The areas of land lost by Lebanon on its borders with occupied Palestine for the benefit of Israel have accumulated and grown steadily in a chronology starting from Sykes-Picot to the UN’s Blue Line and until the present day. In each instance, foreign nations or intruder entities were behind the loss, which produced and continues to produce permanent historical and geopolitical grounds for keeping the conflict alive in this region.