 Hi friends and subscribers and welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell, I cover topics related to living in Israel and Jerusalem. Those who have been subscribed here for a while might remember that a few months ago I visited the tiny Alawite village of Rajar in northern Israel. Technically, the village is located over the Israel-Lebanon border, which is commonly known as the Blue Line. As such, the village might be described as territory half in Lebanon, which Israel is treating as its own enclave. But welcome back to the messy geopolitics of this little town later. Rajar has been in the news lately because Lebanese civilians have been waving flags right at the border, which Israel is seeing as the latest in a string of provocations by Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border fence. Here's video footage of what went down today. Although Israeli media claimed that Lebanese villagers had broken through the border fence and walked through the village of Rajar, it seems as if the villagers actually only broke through a fence which had been erected by Unifil to keep them away from the village and use that fact to wave Hezbollah flags right in the face of village residents. As in other places along the Israel-Lebanon border, Unifil generally works to avoid points of friction between Israeli and Lebanese civilians. Although being in an enclave over the international border, Rajar is an especially delicate geopolitical hotspot. The first thing to know about Rajar is that despite its complicated history, it's not really such a big place. The village actually only has about 2,500 citizens, other than the fact that it's the only Alawite village in Israel and the fact that it's technically split between two countries. It's a fairly unremarkable place. It's oddly clean and well maintained, but it's essentially just a small village in a fairly remote part of Israel-Lebanon. Rajar's modern history begins in 1932 when the residents, who are mostly Alawites, were given the option of choosing a nationality and chose to be part of Syria. Alawites follow Alawism, which is a sect within Islam. Of course, this was before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In 1967, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, and thus Rajar came under its control. Briefly, Rajar had the status of a nomads land, until Israel decided that it wanted to subsume the village into the rest of the Golan Heights as newly controlled territory. Things got a lot more complicated following Israel's entry into Lebanon in 1982 and the drawing up of the Blue Line in 2000, which to this day serves as the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, is a UN peacekeeping mission which attempts to preserve the peace along this line. Afterwards drawn up, the Blue Line placed half of Rajar within Lebanese territory and half within Israel or the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and thus began Rajar's very unusual situation of being a tiny village split between two countries. During the first decade of Rajar's existence as a split village, it became clear to Israel that its geopolitical situation was untenable. The Lebanese-controlled northern half of the village provided a perfect forward base for Hezbollah militants to infiltrate the village and launch attacks on Israeli army personnel located just across the fence in the villages southern half. Hezbollah repeatedly infiltrated the village and used it as a forward base for rocket launching against Israel. In July 2006, Israel decided that the only tenable solution was to take control over the northern half of the village, a situation which has remained the case until today. You can drive into Rajar from Israel and cross over the Blue Line, which is not demarcated physically within the village itself. This is exactly what I did earlier this year and you can watch that video if you're interested. Despite the fact that Rajar has been fully controlled by Israel since 2006, until last year, 2022, the village was unfenced. This meant, of course, that anybody from Lebanon, including Hezbollah, could freely access the village. Due to this risky security situation, access to the village had to be tightly controlled and Israeli who visited the village would not be protected by their border friends and might be at high risk of being kidnapped by Hezbollah. According to media reports, the decision to fence off the village from southern Lebanon was taken and made by the villagers themselves, which illustrates again the complicated geopolitical reality facing this tiny village. The villagers who regard themselves as Alawite Syrians don't have an interest in being caught in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon conflict. They therefore didn't want Lebanese Hezbollah militants taking over the village for military purposes to use against Israel. Becoming part of Lebanon makes that a much more likely reality. So, although the villagers aren't Jewish, remaining part of Israel is probably their smartest option. The decision to fence off the village outskirts in 2022, which now effectively makes it a fully integrated enclave of Israel beyond the border, had a few repercussions. For one, it allowed Israel to relax entry restrictions into the village. In November 2022, after the perimeter fence was installed, Israel began allowing ordinary Israeli citizens in the Khadjar. This is how I was able to visit by simply driving into the village directly from Jerusalem. Prior to this policy change, only residents of the village were allowed past the checkpoint at the village entrance. And if you didn't live there, the Israeli army would literally turn you back. Even though the decision was apparently made by the village itself, the decision to erect the perimeter fence, thus cutting it off from southern Lebanon, drew the attention and ire of Hezbollah. Hezbollah recently decided to erect tents within Israeli territory. And although this event took place at a separate site along the Israel-Lebanon border, military analysts have claimed that the move may have been a direct response to the installation of the perimeter fence in Ghadjar. What's happening between Israel and Hezbollah currently is unclear. All the recent events indicate that things are heating up along the border. Although the tiny village of Ghadjar is a relatively unnotable place, Hezbollah may find it a fitting pretext to pressure Israel into further escalations along the volatile northern border. Thus, this tiny al-await village over the blue line has become a lot more significant to Israel's conflict with Hezbollah than its small population might otherwise suggest. I hope this video has proven interesting and if you'd like to receive more videos from me about everything to do with life in Israel, then please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.