The emergence of the Shaba Farms as a possible item in an agreement authorizing a multinational force for South Lebanon raises a number of issues of which not all the participants in the current negotiations may be aware. They go deep into the question of the very existence of Lebanon as a sovereign state. What are the issues? In the 1923 Anglo-French Demarcation Agreement, which set the borders between the British and French mandates in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, the area was included in Syria. The maps of the 1949 Israeli-Syrian Armistice Agreements similarly designated the area as Syrian. In...