La disputa per le fattorie di Shebaa: un caso anomalo nel quadro del diritto pubblico internazionale

The Shebaa farms claimed by the Lebanese government in 2000, following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, are still at the core of an unresolved territorial dispute. The reports that French officers (Services Spéciaux di Marjayoun) produced during the first years of independance of Lebanon, clarify the incongruity existing between cartography and the daily practice: residents of the local villages were involved in legal cases, which arose for the use of pastures and water sources. In 1946, at the end of a long series of working sessions, a mixed Syrian-Lebanese border demarcation committee concluded an agreement defining the border between Syria and Lebanon in the area between the farm of Mughr Shebaa and the village of Shebaa. In territorial disputes that arise between new or recently formed states, legal titles are usually used to demonstrate proof of land ownership. in the absence of legal titles, the international law tends to preserve the pre-existing administrative territorial borders, even recurring to the use of juridical instruments such as the Uti possidetis iuris. Since the times of the Ottoman Empire, the Shebaa farms have always formed part of village of Shebaa administrative unit, and the Syrian-Lebanese agreement of 1946 is by all means a legal title which could assign the sovereignty of the disputed territory to the Lebanese government. Nevertheless, the United Nations arbitration has not reached any decision yet. The Syrian-Lebanese agreement, analysed in this article, together with some administrative documents collected by the geographer and historian Issam Khalife, would suffice to demonstrate Lebanon’s sovereignty of the disputed area. But the regional geopolitics which involve the broader regional framework seem to make the Shebaa farms an exception to current practice.