On October 14, 2020, a Lebanese delegation consisting of four members boarded a helicopter that set off from the capital Beirut to the town of Ras al-Naqoura, in the far south of the country on the border with the Israeli occupation state, on their way to perform an unconventional mission.
As soon as they got off the plane, the members of the delegation headed to the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), to find an Israeli delegation of six, along with a number of American and international officials, all ready to manage a difficult and complex discussion about the decades-old maritime conflict. Between Beirut and Tel Aviv.
This was by no means an ordinary occurrence. Although military officials in Beirut and Tel Aviv used to meet regularly under the umbrella of the United Nations to discuss border security arrangements, this was the first time that officials from the two countries met to discuss a civilian issue in more than three decades.
Given the lack of diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Israel, which have been in a hypothetical state of war since 1948, officials in both countries were only talking to each other through mediators from the United Nations and Washington.
In any case, the brief exchange of conversations between the two sides did not last for more than an hour, although all of the attendees knew that this meeting was nothing but the first link in a series of meetings that could last for many months, and perhaps years before reaching an agreement, assuming that it would be reached. Fundamentally, and for the Lebanese negotiators in particular, they knew that their most difficult task was to delve into the minefield of Lebanese internal politics and manage the matter in a manner that takes into account the sensitivities of the various factions and takes into account the complexities of the overlapping interests, before they engage in discussing technical disputes with the mediators and Israeli officials.
A car convoy passes from Naqoura ahead of talks between Israel and Lebanon over the disputed waters, near the Lebanese-Israeli border
These complications raised their heads from the moment when Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced, in early October 2020, also an agreement on a framework for conducting border demarcation talks with Israel, sparking debate between the Lebanese factions about the nature, objectives, timeframe, form and locations of these talks. And most importantly;
On the nature of the delegation that will represent the country in the negotiations.
While Washington and Tel Aviv announced their desire to form a civilian political delegation with the presence of representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hezbollah and its allies in the Amal movement pressured to form a technical negotiation delegation from military officials alone so that the talks with Tel Aviv would not acquire any political character.
In an effort to find a way out of this dilemma, Lebanese President Michel Aoun decided to appoint a representative of the Ministry of Petroleum in the negotiation team as a compromise between Washington's insistence on the civilian delegation and Hezbollah's demands for military and technical representation.
But even with the internal complications of Lebanese politics being overcome, it does not seem that the way to reach an agreement to demarcate the border between the Lebanese and the Israelis at the present time will be lined with roses, as this is not the first time that the two parties seek to find a mechanism to divide the maritime area of 860 km and resembles a slice of pizza at its head To land and its base at a depth of 70 miles in the sea, with the aim of resuming the stalled efforts to explore for oil and gas, but previous attempts often clashed in the end with technical disagreements and political disputes, as well as they were mostly conducted through mediators and without direct dialogue in longer periods of time, with Less chances for serious negotiations on points of disagreement, and these facts may be the points that tempt some observers to assume that the current round of negotiations may differ from its predecessors, and that the two parties may succeed in reaching a historic agreement in the end.
Well, as we indicated earlier, the current negotiations are not the first attempt to reach an agreement to demarcate the maritime borders between them, unlike the attempts led by the United Nations since 2010 and were rejected by the occupying power that is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, various American envoys tried to mediate To find a solution to this issue, beginning with Frederick Hof in 2012, who proposed a demarcation line known today as the "Hove Line" and gives Lebanon 500 square kilometers of the disputed area, and gives Israel the remaining share, but his proposal was not accepted by either side.
Later, Amos Hochstein tried to reach a different solution until 2016, but the progress he made was insignificant given that Lebanon spent two and a half years during that period without a government, and the third envoy, David Satterfield, was no better than his predecessors, as he spent more than a year in negotiations The absurdity of back and forth before he hands the file over to the fourth envoy, the new Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker.
Schenker began his work on this file with two successive visits to occupied Jerusalem and Beirut earlier last September, during which he provided guarantees from the US government to both sides about the points of conflict, on top of which is the pledge to support any decisions to finally demarcate the maritime borders with the land borders between them. That that pledge was sufficient to persuade Lebanon to sit in direct negotiations with the Israelis. The fact remains that cannot be circumvented is that the recent American efforts would have met the fate of their predecessors had it not coincided with fundamental changes in the regional environment surrounding both Lebanon and Israel, changes that made direct negotiations between The two countries became possible for the first time in decades, and created an opportunity to effect a strategic change in their relations.
More specifically, it is possible to refer to three central developments that contributed pivotal to attaining the status quo.
The first of these developments is the collapse that Lebanon is currently suffering from at all levels, economically, politically and healthily. Although political and economic crises have become something usual for the Lebanese during the past two decades, matters reached an unprecedented bottom following the disaster of the Beirut Port explosion on August 4, 2020 that occurred on At a time when Lebanon was heading towards bankruptcy, when the wealthy Arab countries and donor agencies were no longer willing or able to bear the burden of helping the country without the adoption of comprehensive economic and political changes.
As for the second of these developments, it was represented in the recent wave of normalization, where the new normalization agreements sponsored by the US administration between Israel and a number of Arab countries such as the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan represented a strategic turning point for Israel's position in the Arab world, and provided a measure of legitimacy for any other Arab party that desires. In entering into direct negotiations with them, it also shed light on the advantages granted to the parties that make a breakthrough in their relations with Tel Aviv, especially US aid and investment opportunities, and the facilitation of international grants and loans, benefits that are undoubtedly tempting Lebanon to take advantage of them in the face of its stifling economic crisis. .
Finally, it is clear that the Shiite axis led by Iran has become suffering from a clear political retreat and a suffocating economic blockade, which necessarily applies to Hezbollah, which is facing increasing financial difficulties due to the lack of aid coming from Tehran and the dwindling of local resources, as well as the US sanctions that besiege the members of the organization. And his political supporters and all the institutions and banks that deal with him.
In addition to its economic crisis, the Lebanese party is also suffering from a political setback, given the increasing momentum of efforts to classify it as a terrorist organization in the United States, Canada and a number of European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Serbia and the Czech Republic, and the pressure on the European Union to formally adopt the same position.
At the same time, Hezbollah finds itself the target of increasing criticism on the Lebanese domestic scene due to its unsuccessful administration of the country and its actual ties to Iran, and these issues were strongly present during the demonstrations that broke out in Lebanon at the end of last year and led to the resignation of the Hariri government, which is effectively dominated by the party. Indeed, the wave of internal anger reached the point of a serious demand for the disarming of the party and the dismantling of its militias following the Beirut Port incident, circumstances that collectively pressured the Shiite group and pushed it to soften some of its previous positions, including agreeing to start negotiations to demarcate the borders with Israel, which Hezbollah was totally opposed to. In earlier times.
Given Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon for nearly two decades, the two countries have a long history of border disputes dating back to that era.
Although the occupying power withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000;
It retained its coercive control over an area of Lebanese territory, specifically the mountainous Shebaa Farms area, which has since turned into a point of constant tensions and conflicts that quickly developed in 2006 into a large-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Except for that war;
Beirut and Tel Aviv implicitly colluded to respect the "Blue Line" drawn up by the United Nations after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, although neither of them recognized it as an official border, and the two sides were keen to maintain a channel of communication between them to discuss security matters on the border, which is These monthly meetings are held between the generals of the two countries in the presence of officials of the UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL.
Until then, the maritime dispute between the two countries had not appeared, and the emergence of that dispute was intrinsically linked to a series of huge natural gas discoveries off the coasts of Israel, Cyprus and Egypt in the middle of the last decade, discoveries that made Lebanon, in turn, possessing its own gas reserves highly probable in its exclusive economic zones (EZZ). ) Stipulated under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that grants each coastal state the power to exercise sovereign rights in an area of 200 nautical miles off its coast, including rights to explore and extract natural resources.
As a result, Beirut rushed to sign an agreement on demarcating the maritime borders with Cyprus in 2007, and stipulating that Nicosia (the capital of Cyprus) cannot demarcate its maritime borders with another country before Beirut is informed and consulted, but the Lebanese-Cypriot agreement contained two main problems:
The first is that it was not ratified later by Lebanon, and thus it became non-binding on Cyprus, which rushed to sign another demarcation agreement for economic zones with Israel in December 2010, and the second is that the Lebanese Ministry of Public Works and Transport committed a topographical error in the deal. Its maritime agreement with Cyprus to demand parts of what Lebanon considers its territorial waters.
Whereas Beirut is demanding today to define a free meeting point at an equal distance between Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus as a basis for demarcating the borders;
Israel wants to adopt the temporary wrong point that was made in the Beirut-Nicosia Agreement in 2007.
Given that Israel is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, it does not fully recognize the rules followed by the United Nations to demarcate the borders that are in the interest of Lebanon, and as a result, the most viable path becomes for Lebanon and Israel to reach and deposit a bilateral agreement on the area in dispute. At the United Nations, what allows the two parties to start exploring for energy in the region, given that it is unlikely that international companies will accept to invest their money in a region considered to be the subject of international conflict.
But even assuming that the two parties have reached an agreement to demarcate the maritime borders, this agreement will not be sufficient by itself to start gas exploration operations in the disputed area, given the possibility that the borders of any gas field in the region will deviate from the borders drawn under the agreement, which means that Lebanon will have Israel will negotiate a new agreement to divide production profits between them, which may also be delayed due to technical and political differences.
Finally, delving into the thorny dilemma of demarcating land borders will remain imperative in order to preserve the stability of any agreement to demarcate the maritime boundaries, and the main problem here - by overlooking even the inherent hostility between Israel and Hezbollah - is that the two countries use three different documents to prove their border rights, the first. It is the Bole-Newcombe Agreement, also known as the British-French Border Agreement of 1923, which demarcated the basic borders between Palestine at that time under the British Mandate and Lebanon and Syria under the French Mandate, and the second is the Green Armistice Line, which was established by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupation state after the war Arab Israeli in 1948, and finally the Blue Line drawn up by the United Nations after Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, which both parties opposed at that time.
Given the bad financial situation in Lebanon, the currency's loss of more than 80% of its value, and the debt, which is equivalent to 170% of the country's GDP;
The resumption of these talks is good news for the state, given that reaching an agreement to demarcate the borders would benefit the Lebanese economy in the medium term, while obtaining the proceeds of the extracted gas after it is sold.
Beirut had already signed agreements to dig two maritime zones (Block 8 and 9) with the global energy giants Novatek of Russia, Italy's Eni and France's Total, but the dispute over the maritime borders and companies ’fear of angering Tel Aviv hindered the exploration operations that were due to be completed by May 2021. It is likely that the signing of the border demarcation agreement will allow these backlogs to resume as soon as possible.
And given that the lion's share of these concessions and potential benefits will likely flow into the bank accounts of the Lebanese political elite, allowing them to finance the private patronage networks that have been hit hard by the current financial crisis;
The financial recovery that gas revenues will bring may give life to the fragile and corrupt political system in Beirut. As a result, it is not surprising that all Lebanese factions did not show serious objection to the negotiations. Instead, they tried to dictate their conditions to them and disavow their political consequences, especially the party. God is keen not to appear weak or peaceful towards Israel, but he finds himself forced to submit to economic and national considerations related to Lebanese-Israeli relations.
With Lebanon realizing that the issue of extracting natural gas from the Mediterranean is of utmost importance to the American administration, and with the country's leaders also knowing that Donald Trump considers making fundamental breakthroughs in Arab-Israeli relations one of the winning cards in his re-election battle;
Beirut did not want to risk provoking Washington’s anger by refraining from calling for mediation for the time being. Instead, Lebanese leaders are betting on reaping the benefits of their response to US appeals, perhaps in the form of some grants and easy international aid, even if the negotiations succeed in reaching an agreement soon.
Lebanese leaders also hope that their serious engagement in the negotiations will push Washington to pressure Tel Aviv to allow companies contracting with the Lebanese government to start exploring for gas in Block 8 by the end of the year (2020) even if no agreement is reached before that time, especially since the block Most of the aforementioned is located in pure Lebanese waters and contains less than 8% of the disputed water, unlike Block 9, which includes most of the water area under dispute, something that - if it occurs - will allow Beirut to start reaping benefits in parallel with the continuation of negotiations, and will help Break up the associated political pressures.
Unlike Lebanon, resolving this border dispute is not an urgent matter for the Israelis, as they are already producing more natural gas than they can use domestically or even export it to neighboring countries such as Egypt, Jordan and even the Palestinian Authority for decades to come.
In light of their current control over this enormous reserve;
They show more flexibility in agreeing to the proposed compromise solution to divide the area in a ratio of (55:45), giving the Lebanese the largest share of the disputed spot, while the Lebanese are still clinging to their rights to have the entire area until now.
More clearly, it can be said that Israel, which began the journey of searching for gas in the Mediterranean 20 years ago, has achieved most of its goals in this field, unlike Lebanon that is coming late to the field, and in light of this, the most important economic benefit to the occupying state from this potential agreement does not lie in Get more excavation areas for more precautions;
Inasmuch as it lies in the opportunities presented by the possible agreement to integrate Lebanon into a normalized regional system led by the Hebrew state to transport gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe in cooperation with Egypt and Cyprus.
To achieve this goal, three main alternatives appear to transport the huge quantities of gas extracted from the region towards the manufacturing and consumption markets in the old continent: the first is to use liquefaction facilities in Egypt or Cyprus, then transport liquid gas through tankers to European ports, and the second is to build a huge pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean. For one of the European destinations, the last alternative is to establish a relatively short pipeline to Turkey, and then take advantage of the Turkish infrastructure to transport gas to Europe.
Given the high cost of all of these alternatives, it is required that all Eastern Mediterranean countries agree to joint use of liquefaction and transportation facilities, in order to justify the huge investments that should be spent on constructing and constructing these facilities.
Apart from the economic aspects, the occupation government is also betting that reaching a border agreement with Beirut would make the northern front of Israel safer and protect the Israeli exploration activities from any possible attacks by Hezbollah, given that the party, in turn, will be keen to maintain calm in the border areas to avoid Disrupting the extraction and export of Lebanese gas, especially in light of the party's increasing involvement in the work of the Lebanese government, and the increasing political and popular consequences of this role that may force the Shiite group to delay its own agenda relatively and adopt the country's national priorities.
Finally, it is not possible in any way to separate the current Lebanese-Israeli negotiations from the wave of Arab-Israeli normalization sponsored by the US administration in recent weeks. After it celebrated the conclusion of agreements to normalize its relations with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, Israel hopes to use this momentum to bring more countries into the fold. Normalization, and she believes that the talks with Beirut - although they are not directly related to normalization - may be a very good way to build confidence and attract other countries in the region.
It is not possible to turn a blind eye to the immediate electoral interest of Trump, who hopes that his successes in persuading Arab countries to normalize or negotiate with Israel will enhance his chances in his critical and fateful re-election battle, and we could consider the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations as one of the basic cards in this plan without exaggeration, had it not been for Washington was forced to reduce the dose of propaganda accompanying it in response to the Lebanese demands.
In the medium term, Washington and Tel Aviv agree in their efforts to connect energy fields in the region and form a regional gas alliance in the eastern Mediterranean with the aim of finding an alternative source to supply Europe with energy away from Russian gas, and Washington has already succeeded in sponsoring what is like an informal NATO energy alliance between Each of Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Jordan hopes to expand this alliance by including Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority as well, in order to block Moscow's attempts to penetrate the region on the one hand, and contain Turkey's efforts to establish itself as a major regional and energy power in the region on the other hand.
In parallel, Washington hopes that its expanded involvement in the region will enable it to secure a comparative advantage for American companies to obtain lucrative exploration and extraction contracts, but even with all these benefits, we will not exaggerate if we claim that the greater goal of the Americans is to sponsor this agreement, and from all their initiatives. The policy towards Lebanon in general is to exploit the political instability in Beirut and to employ the Lebanese economic crisis as an entry point to reshape the power dynamics in the country, reduce Hezbollah's grip on power, and besiege Iranian influence.
To understand this, we must look more closely at the atmosphere in which Washington imposed these negotiations directly following a series of punitive measures that targeted Hezbollah and its allies, chief among them the recent sanctions imposed on two former Lebanese government officials, an official in the Executive Council of Hezbollah, and two Lebanese companies accused by Washington. Transfer funds and materials to the party.
Concurrently, Washington also imposed sanctions on former Lebanese Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, the most prominent aide close to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal Movement, the main ally of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics, in a clear reference to the possibility of imposing sanctions on Berri himself. This step is mainly to force the Speaker of Parliament - who traditionally has the final word in border negotiations - to step aside and leave the file to President Aoun and the army, both of which are relatively closer to Washington, and enjoy relative independence in external decisions specifically from Hezbollah, despite Aoun's connection to an alliance. With the Shiite group, despite expectations that Hezbollah might intervene (internally) in the event of prejudice to its interests.
This punitive atmosphere enabled Washington to impose its main conditions on the nature of the negotiation, the identity and the formation of the negotiating delegation, and forced Hezbollah and its allies to back down relatively and make concessions that might harm their credibility, and the Americans hope to move forward in the border demarcation negotiations, with the financial benefits that may follow for Lebanon. And a possible economic partnership with Tel Aviv, that would result in the weakening of Hezbollah's grip on Lebanese politics gradually, which would mean, in turn, diminishing Iranian influence over the state.
There is no doubt that this hypothesis is strongly present in the minds of American and Israeli officials, even if this scenario remains unlikely in the short term.
As indicated by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, the aspirations of the Israelis to establish good relations with Lebanon are not new, as officials in the Occupying Power believe that the main dispute between Beirut and Tel Aviv since the withdrawal of the second from the first south in 2000 relates only to the threat posed by Hezbollah, and that the rest Disputes over water, border and refugee issues will not be difficult to resolve through negotiations.
Hebrew officials also believe that most Lebanese political forces are not inherently hostile to Israel, and that the ongoing war between the two countries is primarily due to external factors, starting from the era of the Palestinian presence through the time of Syrian influence, and ending with the rise of Hezbollah, which is linked to Iran, to become the most influential and influential power in the country.
On the practical level, Israel has many direct and indirect contacts with most Lebanese parties and representatives of different sects under the umbrella of the United Nations and the United States, and sometimes even without them. Agreements, arrangements and understandings have often been reached with these parties, although they did not all last for a long period, starting from The ceasefire agreement in March 1949, by which Lebanon became the first Arab country to sign an agreement with Israel.
Later, a peace treaty was signed between the two sides in May 1983, following the First Lebanon War, but the Lebanese government did not eventually ratify it due to Syrian pressure, and in the wake of the process of settling scores (the Seven Day War) that Israel launched against Lebanon in 1993, Negotiating unwritten understandings between the two sides, which was repeated again after Operation Grapes of Wrath (April War) in 1996.
By the year 2000, the two sides entered into failed negotiations to agree on a mechanism for the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that ended with a unilateral withdrawal of the occupation army, and finally, there are the direct negotiations that took place at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and the Joint Military Committee that meets internationally under the auspices of UNIFIL with a permanent presence. Lebanese and Israeli military officials.
These theoretical convictions and historical facts lead American and Israeli officials to believe that Lebanon by its nature is not a country that is resistant to normalization. However, there is no indication that the current state of official hostility between Beirut and Tel Aviv will end any time soon, and on the contrary there are many reasons that push us. To say that the current negotiations to demarcate the borders may not succeed in achieving their basic goal or turn into a prelude to the full normalization of relations between the two parties.
Hezbollah remains the most influential party in Lebanon politically, and the most powerful militarily despite all the setbacks it has undergone in recent years, and it is certain that the party will stand in the way of any attempts to push Lebanon towards normalization, not only with ideological motives, but also For political and popular reasons, given that the party built the bulk of its credit and symbolic capital on the idea of confronting Israel.
Although the party eventually found itself obliged to agree to maritime border negotiations, it has repeatedly emphasized that it will remain technical, not political, negotiations.
As for the second issue, it relates to the extreme weakness of Hezbollah's opponents in the Lebanese political system from the parties loyal to the West and the Arab Gulf states (March 14 Alliance), to the point where it is difficult to identify a party capable of bearing the political and popular consequences and leading the Lebanese engine of normalization, especially in light of the state of popular hostility. The wide spread of Israel among the Lebanese people as a whole, not just among the supporters of Hezbollah, because of the role the occupying power played in destroying Lebanon and exhausting it with costly wars over and over again.
However, it is not excluded that progress in the talks, in parallel with US pressure on Hezbollah and Iran, will contribute to a strategic shift in relations between the two countries, even on a relatively long term. After all, Lebanon and Hezbollah decided for the first time in decades to soften their positions and accept By negotiating directly with Israel, and in return, the occupying power accepted to engage in negotiations with the hope of damaging the credibility of Hezbollah, and although the two parties may not reach an agreement soon, the fact that they decided to sit together in the first place cannot be ignored, and that all scenarios have become established given this new beginning. .