The Independent of London
5 November 1998
Earth moves for Israelis
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
ISRAEL OCCUPIES Arab land: most of the Palestinian West Bank, part of the
Gaza Strip, all of the Syrian Golan Heights and 10 per cent of Lebanon.
But now, it turns out, Israel is taking the land of Lebanon - quite
literally - to Israel.
The world may applaud the Wye Agreement and the new chances of a Middle East
"peace process", but thousands of tons of Lebanese soil are being secretly
trucked over the border into Israel from the south of Lebanon to fertilise
the farmlands of Israeli Galilee.
Israeli bulldozers are stripping the topsoil off Lebanese farmland outside the
villages of Khiam and Marjayoun, deep inside Israeli-occupied Lebanon, to help
Israeli farmers two miles further south on the other side of the border - to
grow tomatoes and olives.
Lebanon, far from being a land of milk and honey, is drenched in the blood of
tens of thousands of Lebanese and hundreds of Israelis, but the government of
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyah, seems oblivious to the political
implications of its decision.
If Lebanon is Israel's Vietnam - three more of its proxy South Lebanon Army
militia were killed yesterday by the pro-Iranian Hizbollah - the land, it
seems, can become Israeli, whatever the cost. And there seems to be no cost
at all, save for the petrol used by the scores of Israeli lorries that have
carried six feet of topsoil from 3,000 square metres of southern Lebanon into
Israel.
The United Nations, which has more than 4,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon,
confirms that Lebanese earth is being trucked over the border.
And the Lebanese government, needless to say, has vainly complained to both the
UN and the European Union about the theft.
Occupation is one thing - but nobody has ever before heard of moving a country,
physically, across an international frontier.
Military maps clearly show that the fertile red earth has been taken from
fields north of the 1948 UN ceasefire line - accepted as the Lebanese-Israeli
border - but within a zone marked off by a stretch of barbed wire (known as
the "technical fence") laid down by the Israelis without explanation 15 years
ago.
Locals say the land is owned by two Lebanese families. Other stories say the
land was owned by a Lebanese Jew who emigrated to Israel.
Either way, there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever Lebanon -
and it now lies in Israel.
