(Part 3) That Damned Confusing Blue Line

Robert Fisk takes another shot at explaining the confusion over the blue line:

The real problem is twofold. The “Blue Line” was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an “accurate” border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms — which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate — south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war).

But political errors of this kind led to other mistakes and sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN’s maps.

Add to this the entire regional hostility — Hamas versus Israel, Israel’s threats against Syria and Iran and Syria’s and Iran’s threats against Israel, not to mention the wreckage of George Bush’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq — and you can see how a tree can start a war.

If that can’t give you a headache, I don’t know what can.