Several days ago, Hezbollah fighters guarding Shiite Lebanese citizens living in and around 14 Lebanese villages located in Syrian territory clashed with armed opposition groups affiliated with radical Sunni Islamist factions. The incident, the first of its kind, portends a possible transition of Syria’s sectarian strife to Lebanon. Also, in a sense, this confrontation proves that historical mistakes do not fade with time.
Today, the area on both sides of the Syrian-Lebanese border is paying for the mistake made by François Georges-Picot and Sir Mark Sykes at the beginning of the last century. The French and British colonialists, respectively, laid out a demographic and political map of the countries of the Levant which were under their mandate. Their vision was based on circumstantial interests and without consideration of the requirements of the historical and geographical reality.