evidence: AL-QASR, Lebanon — That half of his farm lies in Syria and half in Lebanon is a source of mystery and inconvenience for Mohammed al-Jamal, whose family owned the property long before Europeans turned up and drew the lines that created the borders of the modern Middle East. [...] One of the borders they drew cut through al-Qasr, among numerous small farming villages dotting the lush fertile land fed by the streams of Mount Hermel in the remote northeastern corner of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. [...] At a Hezbollah office in Hermel, the Shiite town that administers al-Qasr, an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media denounced the fragmenting landscape as an American plot to split the Arab world into weak, divided statelets to affirm Israel as the region’s most powerful country.