A large Lebanese flag flies high above Bastara. Fatima Zohra, one of three inhabitants who refused to leave this isolated, ramshackle huddle of stone huts despite more than three decades of occupation, comes out. She is all smiles and coffee cups. “Welcome to Bastara,” she says. “Welcome to Lebanon.”
Anywhere else, this exact reference to our geographical position would seem superfluous. But in Bastara, the confirmation is very important. Just 150 meters away, an “Israeli” border fence appears to stand between the farm and Lebanon. The casual visitor, dropping unprepared into Zohra’s farm, would be forgiven for thinking they had inadvertently crossed onto “the other side.”
But this is not “Israel”. Bastara is a little bit of Lebanon on the other side of the border fence separating the liberated South from the occupied Golan, returned to Lebanon by the UN border commission just over two months ago.
It’s a case of facts on the ground lagging behind facts on paper.
Getting there is half the fun, even if the road from Kfar Shuba, the nearest village, is a real car-killer. Piles of gravel and rocks the size of small children strew the path, a crude dirt track that winds across the lower slopes of Jabl al-Sheikh through untended fields. On the hills above, “Israeli” outposts cap the crests of several peaks. The view is breathtaking and from up there it must be possible to see Haifa, possibly beyond. No wonder the “Israelis” refuse to leave.
Twenty dusty minutes later, the “border” appears. Respite, at least for the car, is in sight. On the other side, a well-maintained “Israeli” Army patrol road follows the fence up the hillside and down onto the plateau below.
Turn left and it’s an easy drive up the hill to the Shibaa Farms. Lebanon and Syria say the farms are Lebanese. “Israel” says they are Syrian. But try to get your own point across and you will surely be shot, well before you get to the “Israeli” outpost at the top of the hill.
Best to turn right. This is the “Bastara pocket” and you are free to drive along the road, complete with signs in Hebrew, as far as farms and the remains of the old “Israeli” outpost, blown up during the retreat. Beyond, the road continues down to where, one day, the borders of Lebanon and Syria will meet again. But for now this, too, is still occupied land.
The track peters out in front of a gate in the fence. Now standing wide open, this gate for decades held the power of life or death over the Zohra family. Literally.
“It was open occasionally but only when the “Israelis” wanted,” recalls Zohra. “One day my mother fell ill and we begged from the morning to let us take her to Marjayoun but they refused. They only opened the gate that night and by then she was dead.”
The gate is disconcerting. Just a few kilometers away at the Hassan Gate, “Israeli” troops fire on those coming too close. But here one can drive right through. Perhaps because for so many years it rarely opened, the gate looks like it should still be shut. Even Zohra admits she is not entirely used to the new status quo.
Big business has no such doubts. And if “Israel” is confused over the status of the farms, perhaps they should have a word with Cellis. Bastara might exist on the other side of an “Israeli” fence, but that doesn’t stop cellular phones from ringing.
Zohra insists that Bastara is not part of the Shibaa Farms. “No, Shibaa is there, a long way inside,” she says pointing over the crest of the hills. “We have land there too, but my family was forced to move here in 1967.”
She has never seen that land, though. Born in 1970, Zohra’s world has been very small.
This year, it finally got a little larger and, for the moment, a little less frightening. The Zohras ­ Fatima’s elderly father Mohammed and her cousin, Qassem are the only other family members left in Bastara ­ can breathe more easily. For the first time in her life, Fatima celebrates Independence Day.
But like other residents of the former occupied zone, her happiness is tempered by the uncertainty ahead. The Shibaa Farms are still very much an issue, as the recent roadside-bomb blasts attest, and while the “Israelis” have gone, the Lebanese state has yet to make an appearance. If for Bastara the fight is over, for the Zohras the struggle goes on.
“We lived in misery but we never left because my father wouldn’t let (the “Israelis”) get our land, Lebanese land,” she says. “Our life is hard, very hard. We still don’t have what we need. But at least for now we can be happy because the “Israelis” have left.”

The Daily Star, 23-11-2000.