An agreement described by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “historic”, and paves the way for a final settlement of the dispute over the maritime boundaries, allowing the two parties to begin exploring for gas in their territorial waters.
Negotiations will be launched to reach a formal final agreement, between October 12 and 14, and the Lebanese and Israeli parties will sit at the negotiating table under American auspices and direct supervision by the United Nations through “UNIFIL”.
The initial agreement brings to mind how the so-called axis of resistance has dealt since the year 2000, the date of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, with the Lebanese demanding at that time to begin demarcating the borders, and to begin the process of demarcating them under the supervision of the United Nations, but this path remained slow due to many points of contention between Two sides.
In parallel with the demarcation process, Hezbollah was clear from the very first moment of the withdrawal, as it linked its “resistance” role (meaning its weapons) to the Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms and Kfarshouba hills.
On the second day of the Israeli withdrawal, Nasrallah said in a letter from the city of Bint Jbeil on May 26, 2000: “I advised him (then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak) to get out of the Shebaa Farms and solve this problem, and days will prove that he has no other choice, and we International resolutions do not concern us. Rather, we understand that there is occupied Lebanese territory that must be returned to Lebanon. ”
Since that date, the border demarcation file remained the subject of discussion, until the oil file appeared in the territorial waters, and talk about the demarcation started again, which is what former Prime Minister Saad Hariri tried to do when he was head of the “national unity” government between 2009 and 2010. And that came as a result of the agreement of Saudi Arabia and Syria in what is known as the “Sin – Sen” agreement.
Hariri’s first attempt failed, so he tried again in 2016 after the presidential settlement that brought him back to the premiership as an ally of the Free Patriotic Movement. At that time, he clashed with Berri again, as happened in the first attempt, to return and confirm, after his meeting with Pompeo in August 2019, Beirut’s commitment to “follow up The path of negotiations regarding our land and sea borders, “launched by the United States.
However, since the US entered into this file in earnest with the arrival of the administration of President Donald Trump, Berri was the only mediator who held all the keys in his hand, despite the fact that Article 52 of the Lebanese Constitution assumed that “the President of the Republic negotiated and concluded international treaties in agreement with the Prime Minister. , Provided that it is approved by the Council of Ministers, at the stage of procedural conclusion, and by the House of Representatives, in the cases specified in the aforementioned article for legislative conclusion.
In this context, writer and political analyst Elie Fawaz told the Al-Hurra website, “What was standing contradicts all customs and traditions, as there is no righteousness in what he was doing, but on the Lebanese way, the strong can do whatever he wants, especially with regard to what matters to him. Of course, this file is a priority for the Shiite duo because it affects them in more than one field. ”
And when the maritime border dispute began, it was the US envoy at the time, Frederick Hoff, who supervised its treatment between 2011 and 2013, and expert in the oil and gas sector, Laurie Haitian, told Al-Hurra that, “In cases of border conflict as is the case between Lebanon and Israel, The custom was to divide the disputed area equally, which did not happen. Rather, Hove proposed that Lebanon would get 60 percent compared to 40 percent for Israel, but there was no government at the time to grab the initiative. ”
Haitian added, “The Americans considered that gas could be a way for cooperation between the two countries, but Lebanon was not interested in this matter until there was a government and the presidential settlement took place, and the issue of border demarcation became a priority and this is why we saw more than one party that tried to take the file from the president of the Council.” MPs, however, did not succeed. ”
It does not appear until now that the issue of the land borders may impede reaching an agreement, and the paths are closely connected with unclear contours, and Haitian notes that “the tactic begins when the actual negotiations begin, which have no time frame, as the Israeli side demanded a time limit, but Lebanon.” He refused to specify a time frame for the completion of the agreement. ”
The President of the Republic, Michel Aoun, will follow up the negotiations with the Prime Minister, and a delegation of deputies, ministers, and experts from the Lebanese army will be formed, which has developed many technical skills in the recent period, enabling him to manage the border demarcation process well, according to what people familiar with the file say, who followed his path. Several years ago.
And if the framework agreement was a first step towards reaching an agreement by which the maritime borders in the eastern Mediterranean would be demarcated, and in the disputed boxes 8, 9 and 10 between the two sides, the question remains about the future of the negotiation process, which returned to the normal course after Berri abandoned the file in favor of the state. Lebanese.
Fawaz said, “The Speaker of Parliament used to act as if he was the one to decide in this matter, and the constitution is clear in the powers granted to him, and of course, they do not include anything that has occurred in the file of border negotiations.”
Fawaz believes that in any case, “and at this time, that is, the time of sanctions, it seems that there are those who decided to send positive messages to the Americans, in order to reduce the pressure imposed on Lebanon, specifically on Hezbollah,” and this is what Haitian agrees with: “The timing is political and the goal is clear: Take the pressure off us. ”
A few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron criticized the Shiite duo’s intransigence and not accepting a compromise in order to form a “mission government”, and Nasrallah replied that he provided everything possible, and there are those in Lebanon who say that the eye of the duo was directed from the moment Macron announced his initiative, to the Americans All they were doing was buying time.
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