The disputed border where every herdsman is seen as a potential spy

SHEBAA, Lebanon — Hassan Zahra was coming to the end of the working day, herding goats on a mountaintop along Lebanon’s southeastern border, when he was ambushed by a group of Israeli soldiers, he said.

Zahra, 23, said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to an interrogation center in Israel last year, where he was accused of spying for Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Hundreds of their goats were left on the hillside.

“They said:

‘The shepherds, they make it look like they are just grazing, but they work for Hezbollah and they are watching us,’” Zahra said.

“We just take care of our goats, but they don’t believe it.”

Although warring states Lebanon and Israel have just negotiated a maritime border, the situation remains tense along its still-disputed land border, flanked by minefields and barbed wire fences, and patrolled by drones.

In between are the men herding sheep and goats in southern Lebanon adjacent to the agricultural region called Shebaa Farms, which is claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel, where it is known as Mount Dov.

The shepherds say they have been repeatedly kidnapped by Israeli troops, accused of providing information on the army and its movements in the area to Hezbollah.

But when they are released, they are often held for questioning by Lebanese authorities, who apparently fear they may have been recruited as spies by the other side.

Both the pastors and Hezbollah deny the allegations of Israeli espionage.

When Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, it withdrew to what is called the Blue Line, a demarcation established by the United Nations to confirm Israeli withdrawal.

But the formal boundary has never been resolved.

And Israel has not backed down from Shebaa Farms, saying the area was part of the Golan Heights it seized from Syria in 1967, a position supported by a United Nations assessment.

Zahra says her family still has land at Shebaa Farms and previous generations raised cattle there.

The area has long been a powder keg between Israel and Lebanon; Hezbollah has said it will not hand over its weapons, despite UN resolutions calling for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias, while part of what it considers occupied Lebanon.

More than 10,000 UN peacekeepers patrol the 75-mile Blue Line, but that hasn’t stopped conflict from erupting or Israeli troops capturing shepherds like Zahra in areas along the porous border.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, acknowledged the difficulties.

“Because the line is not well defined, it is difficult to know if the shepherds are crossing into Israel or if the Israelis are crossing into Lebanon,” he said.

Tenenti said Israeli forces call shepherds like Zahra “operational shepherds”.

The Israeli military says the shepherds use a phone app that deletes photos of personnel and vehicles once they are sent back to their Hezbollah handlers.

Shepherds are sometimes sent across the border with women and children “to hide their true purpose and make them appear innocent,” the Israeli military said in a video posted by an Israeli news site last year.

The video notes that the military “have been monitoring this trend and have proactively chosen to publicly expose it as part of the battle of wits with the other side.”

Hezbollah called Israeli charges “empty and unfounded”.

“They intend to justify attempts to occasionally kidnap shepherds and interrogate them for information about resistance posts in that area or information related to the movement of resistance members in that area,” the group said in a statement. .

Zahra said he was inside Lebanese territory in January last year when he was met by a dozen Israeli soldiers, who surrounded him and pointed their rifles at him.

Was held for three days in Israel, he added, manned 24 hours a day by armed soldiers and interrogated several times.

The Israeli army, answering questions of The New York Timeshe said Zahra had “infiltrated” Israeli territory and that her interrogation had yielded valuable intelligence.

Zahra’s arrest last year was the second time Israeli soldiers had taken him away, he added.

He said the first time, when he was 14, he and his older brother, Ismail, were held for hours.

Israeli prosecutors demanded to know who was sending them to the area, he recalled.

United Nations peacekeepers monitor the return of shepherds and livestock through the only operational border checkpoint in the area.

It was there that Zahra returned to Lebanon after Israeli forces liberated him.

Lebanese intelligence agents took him away and interrogated him for about 12 hours.

The Lebanese army has not responded to questions about why it is questioning the shepherds.

Zahra’s father, Kassem Ali Zahra, 62, said he thought the Lebanese army was concerned the pastors might be recruited as Israeli spies.

“The government is starting to suspect us,” the elderly Zahra said, smiling at one of the two Lebanese intelligence officers who stood nearby and were carefully watching her interview.

On a recent day, three generations of the Zahra family gathered near the Blue Line.

Hassan Zahra had been in the mountains all day and had come down the slope with his goats towards his father; his brother; and Kassem, his 7-year-old nephew.

His father filled two troughs with water for the animals.

The older Zahra glanced at Kassem, who carried a staff as tall as himself and mimicked the movements and sounds of his elders to call goats, learning the family trade.

“We all fear for his future,” Hassan Zahra said.

United Nations peacekeeping forces at a small outpost nearby patrol 24 hours a day and have radars that detect aerial violations of the Blue Line, which occur almost daily by Israel.

When peacekeepers see shepherds approaching the division, they whistle to warn them, said Lt. Col. Abhinav Bakshi, who oversees a contingent of Indian troops monitoring about 4 kilometers of the unmarked Blue Line.

“If they don’t cross paths, it’s easier for me because otherwise it’s two sleepless nights until we bring them back and do a count,” he said.

“The pastor doesn’t realize it’s a line because it’s an imaginary line.”

As he spoke, an Israeli surveillance drone buzzed overhead, a violation of Blue Line rules.

This year, Bakshi said, there has been an increase in reported violations of the Blue Line, with as few as two a day.

About 40% of them involved shepherds and their herds, he added.

Referring to Israel’s arrests of shepherds, Muhammad Hashim, governor of the city of Shebaa in southern Lebanon, said:

“The enemy takes them with the belief that they could work for the benefit of the resistance.”

“But the resistance has its people, it doesn’t need shepherds,” he added, referring to Hezbollah.

Hashim noted that the area was predominantly Sunni Muslim, with a small Roman Catholic minority, and that support for Hezbollah, a Shia group, was limited.

Another pastor, Maher Hamdan, 28, said he was captured by Israeli troops twice this year.

The first time was on Jabal al Sheikh, a mountain that rises up behind his family’s house.

“It was an ambush, I didn’t cross the line,” he said.

“I know there is Danger there because they are close to the Blue Line, but there are no signs”.

He said he was stripped naked, handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to an Israeli military headquarters where he was interrogated for hours about Hezbollah’s presence on the mountain. He told his interrogators no.

After midnight, he said, they returned him to the same spot where they had captured him and released him without UN intervention.

Then, in June, on the same mountain, in a treeless rocky area, he came across soldiers lying in ambush, he said.

He ran away, but the soldiers started shooting at him.

“I could see the powder as the bullets hit the ground around me,” he recalled.

He was quickly surrounded by soldiers with their rifles aimed at him and taken away for questioning, he said.

This time, he said, military intelligence officers asked him where his home was and had him pinpoint it on a map.

Hamdan still returns to the same mountain every day so his goats can graze, knowing he may face the same ordeal.

But he, like other pastors in the area, said he had no choice.

“Our mountain is small and Israel has conquered most of it. We have to go where there is food for the goats,” she said.

“If you look at me, it’s clear I’m not Hezbollah.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut and Jonathan Rosen from Jerusalem.

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