ALL OUT AT SEA
After writing in two posts recently about our
maritime border dispute with Lebanon I was sure that this week I would be able
to conclude the topic.
I was not alone, Mohamed O. Abd El-Aziz,
who specialises in our region’s political economy,
thought so too. In a piece he wrote for the Cairo Review he asked
cautiously “Will
Lebanon and Israel Finally End their Maritime Border Dispute?”
“Perhaps now more than
ever, a determined American-led effort to settle the
maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel seems within reach. If
proven successful, such a development could be a game-changer for both nations,
who have been in a state of war for seven decades.
Conflict between both
countries escalated forty years ago when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.
In 2020, the United States
resumed its decade-long mediation demarche between Tel Aviv and Beirut
regarding their maritime borders. This negotiation track is apparently making headway
as it entered its final
stages over the past few weeks. The significance of an Israeli–Lebanese
maritime agreement would not only be limited to mere economic benefits—which
largely pertain to the allocation of gas reserves to each of the two states,
paving the way for the much-needed gas exports from the Eastern-Mediterranean
waters to Europe. Equally important are the geopolitical repercussions that
might be unleashed by such a deal, especially when it comes to the prospects of
averting any future conflict between Israel and the
Iranian-backed militant Shiite group, Hezbollah.
In light of the blend of
interests strategically at stake not only for the trio (Lebanon, Israel, and
the United States) directly involved in this process, but also for the European
Union which is already in dire need of diverse energy resources to lessen its
reliance on Russian supplies. It can be fairly said that
hammering out an Israeli–Lebanese agreement on maritime borders
has become much more a matter of “when” rather than “if”.
Well,
“It’s not over till it’s over.” Who knows when that will be.
Citing unnamed government officials, the
pro-Hezbollah daily Al-Akhbar reported that Lebanon has crucial reservations about several key
points of the
US-brokered proposal. They refuse to create an offshore security strip under Israeli control and recognise
a line of buoys demarcating the final border between Lebanon and Israel Moreover, Beirut has also refused to condition its work with the French energy firm
TotalEnergies in a contested offshore gas field on agreements with Israel. The
preference is for the company to act in accordance with Lebanon's needs and not
be obligated in discussions with Israel to start drilling on the Lebanese side.
"Lebanon will not agree to hold an official signing ceremony at the UN
headquarters at Nakoura as the Israelis and Americans want. If there is an
agreement, Lebanon will sign a missive that will go to the UN representative in
the presence of the American mediator," the report said.
For
the benefit of his readers, Mohamed O. Abd El-Aziz listed
a chronology of the Lebanon-Israel Maritime Dispute. Some
of the details I mentioned in earlier posts on the same topic. I’ve included
them mainly because he places them in a clearer perspective.
“When the United Nations
identified the “blue line” as a sort of provisional separation —not a formal
boundary—between the Lebanese and Israeli territories after the latter’s withdrawal
from south Lebanon in May 2000, the specific issue of maritime borders between
the two countries had not yet surfaced. Back then, Hezbollah—supported by
Damascus—focused its rhetoric on disputed land borders.
It was
a few years later that the issue of maritime borders started to attract the attention of some
regional countries amidst the rise of gas and oil discoveries in the
Eastern-Mediterranean. At the time, experts began making projections regarding
the
vast reserves of natural wealth lying beneath the Levant Basin; perhaps the
most prominent among these estimates was one published by the U.S. Geological
Survey in 2010, which indicated that unexplored potential reserves may
reach 122
trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in the East-Mediterranean
waters, specifically in the subsea and coastal geological region shared by
Cyprus, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
Those findings prompted a
handful of regional countries to explore the prospects of their hidden marine
resources. Over nearly two decades, Israel expedited plans for discovering
major gas fields in its waters. Egypt and Cyprus
were quick to follow suit. Unfortunately, Lebanon at the time did not capitalise
on its alleged newly found treasure.
In January 2007, a
maritime delimitation agreement was reached between Lebanon and Cyprus.
However, numerous questions were raised about the substance and
timing of that accord, which was signed more than two years prior to when
Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone “EEZ” was officially defined. (EEZ is the
area in which a given country is legally eligible to make use of its marine
resources). It was not until April 2009 that Point “23” was identified as the
southernmost point of Lebanon’s EEZ, not Point “1” as the Lebanese side itself
had mistakenly stipulated in its maritime deal with Cyprus.
The Lebanon–Cyprus deal
never entered into force because it was not ratified by the Lebanese
parliament, partly due to pressure from Turkey, which denounced all maritime
border accords involving the Republic of Cyprus. Subsequently, Israel and
Cyprus signed their own maritime delimitation agreement in December 2010 (which
entered into force in February 2011) by which Israel ignored the updated
Lebanese identification of the latter’s EEZ. This meant that Israel did not recognise
Point “23” as Lebanon’s southernmost tip although such a coordinate line had
been submitted by the Lebanese mission to the UN a few months earlier in July
and October 2010.
Rather, the maritime deal
between Israel and Cyprus specified Point “1” as Israel’s northernmost
marker—seventeen km north of Point “23”. This view was later adopted by
Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, and then officially delivered to the UN via the
Israeli mission there in July 2011. This prompted Lebanon to resubmit its
counter-perspective to the UN in November 2011, restating Point “23” as its
boundary.
The Israeli-Cypriot
agreement, likewise the Lebanese–Cyprus deal, included a standard clause
specifying that the geographical coordinates of the first and last markers may
be adjusted in light of future EEZ delimitation-demarcation with other
neighbouring states. This actually left open room for future manoeuvres by the
Israeli and Lebanese sides.
Due to the official state
of war between Lebanon and Israel, a third-party mediation was the apparent
option for peacefully settling their maritime dispute. The initial Lebanese
preference was to stick to the UN as the main interlocutor. However, that was
not feasible at least from a legal standpoint because Israel is not party to
the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), apart from
the historical tendency of the Israeli establishment to undermine the UN by
mocking it as an acronym for “United Nothing”. Therefore, the only
logical mediator had to be the United States.
Back in 2011-2012,
Hezbollah seemingly accepted the Lebanese government’s engagement in the
American-led talks. That was partially triggered by the Obama administration’s
preliminary steps aiming to adopt a conciliatory tone toward Iran, Hezbollah’s
patron, in an effort to resolve the nuclear issue. Nonetheless, Hezbollah was
still deeply entrenched in Bashar Al-Assad’s armed campaign at the onset phase
of Syria’s civil war.
At the time, Frederic Hof
was the first U.S. mediator assigned to resolving the Israeli-Lebanese maritime
border dispute. He was considered then to be among Washington’s prominent
specialists on the region. However, Hof’s mediation
failed to bring about a Lebanese Israeli accord regarding the maritime dispute.
After Hof’s failure and
departure, Amos Hochstein, an Israeli-born American diplomat and energy expert,
took over this mission during Obama’s second term. Hochstein proposed in 2013
to draw a maritime “blue line” resembling the one established by the UN in 2000
to demarcate the Lebanese-Israeli land border. The “new” line was supposed to
be temporary with the aim of mitigating frictions by prohibiting any
exploration activities within the disputed area until a solution was reached.
It was seen as a good starting point in Lebanon, but was not well-viewed in
Israel. Continued power vacuums in Lebanon also did not help move the proposal
forward. By the time Lebanon had functioning institutions, with the election of
Michel Aoun (an ally of Hezbollah) as president and forming a new cabinet in
the last weeks of 2016, the Obama administration was already packing
up after the election of Donald Trump.
Resolving the
Lebanese–Israeli maritime dispute was not a genuine priority for Trump who was
inclined to view Lebanon only through the prism of reducing Hezbollah’s
influence as one of Iran’s proxies. In turn, Hezbollah was adamant not to ease
the situation for an American administration seen as having adopted the most
hardline position against Tehran and its regional allies since the 1979
Revolution.
However, the last year of
Trump’s era coincided with an alarming set of gloomy events in Lebanon: an
economy on the brink of bankruptcy, longer power outages, widespread protests
reflecting deep public frustration toward the ruling elite, and a port
explosion. Such a terrible downturn forced Hezbollah and its internal partners
to cope with Washington’s renewed demarche through which the then-American
envoy, David Shenker, tried to revive negotiations just a few months before the
2020 U.S. presidential elections. The timing back then was prompted by Trump’s
desire to attract more Israeli-leaning voters for his re-election.
Consequently, a new round
of American-mediated talks between Israel and Lebanon resumed in October 2020
(with the UN confined to a secondary role), but it was only a few weeks later that the
Trump era practically came to an end in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory in the
U.S. presidential elections,
Hochstein was re-chosen by
the Biden administration as the U.S mediator. Since he was already a well-known
figure to Israeli and Lebanese interlocutors, perhaps he was expecting or at
least willing to resume negotiations from the point where he left
off in
late 2016. However, he found the Lebanese negotiating ceiling in 2021 to be
significantly different as Lebanese negotiators claimed Line “29” as the
country’s southernmost maritime point, allegedly adding another 1,430 square
kilometres to its exclusive economic zone, including part of the Karish gas
field totally claimed by Israel.
Lebanon’s new demand was
reportedly influenced by a technical survey conducted some years earlier by a
group of army specialists with the assistance of the UK Hydrographic office. In
turn, the Israeli side and even Hochstein himself strictly dealt with such an
upgraded ceiling as a “non-starter”.
Since the beginning of
this year, and as the Ukrainian crisis gradually shifted to the brink of a
fully-fledged Russian armed conflict, the West has become increasingly alert to
the strategic necessity of diversifying Europe’s energy supplies. Perhaps
that’s why Hochstein ramped up his shuttle diplomacy between Lebanon and Israel in February 2022, just a
couple of weeks before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, tensions in
the East-Med seemed to be mounting last June when Israel moved a gas storage and offloading vessel (affiliated with the
Greek-owned, London-based gas company “Energean”) onto the Karish field. In
response, Lebanon’s leaders submitted to Hochstein an updated counter-proposal which included a swap compromise: they would move back to
Line “23” on the condition of acquiring the entire Qana field whose further
southern edge lies beyond the mentioned line. In return, Lebanon, as the new
proposal stipulated, would drop its claim to the whole Karish field. “
However, the following July,
Hezbollah sent drones to the Karish gas rig which were shot down by Israeli jet fighters , while Hassan Nasrallah continuously threatened to target such
infrastructure if Israel carried on its plans to explore gas from Karish before
reaching a prior compromise with Lebanon. The situation appears to have
de-escalated when Hochstein delivered positive news while visiting Beirut in
late July; local media reported that Israel would be ready to cede the totality
of the Qana field. In exchange for part of the financial proceeds from gas or oil
reserves, if they were to be found there in commercial quantities, would be
paid to Israel mainly through major foreign companies—like the French
“Total”—that would supposedly launch their drilling activities in Qana after
the conclusion of the prospective deal
Amid the growing momentum,
Hochstein visited Lebanon on September 9, where he reportedly conveyed Israel’s
willingness to demarcate the coordinates of Line “1” in a way that permits
creating a limited buffer zone along the borders. While Beirut is essentially
worried about the potential consequences on any future demarcation of land borders
between the two countries, there is a sensible chance for the Lebanese side to
agree to an adaptable mid-way regarding that Israeli-requested security buffer
zone, which does not seem to be a “deal-breaker”.
Meanwhile, Israel
postponed exploration activities in Karish till October 2022, most probably
until an agreement is sealed. However, the timing of the potential deal
coincides with two pertinent upcoming events that may influence it; the first
is the end of Michel Aoun’s presidential rule in Lebanon on October 31, on the
eve of the upcoming Israeli elections scheduled for November 1.
The main obstacle
to
clinching the deal now revolves around the pressing domestic politics in both Israel and Lebanon. On the Israeli side, it
may seem difficult for the current Prime Minister Yair Lapid to strike a deal
with Lebanon—and indirectly with Hezbollah—at such a critical juncture;
particularly in terms of how his government can address the legal argument
recently raised by some opposition figures who claim that the potential draft
agreement must be approved either by a public referendum or a majority of
eighty Knesset members.
A
brief pause to consider how Benyamin Netanyahu would have reacted if he was
prime minister and had to accept or reject Amos Hochstein’s prospective deal. I’ll
hazard a guess and say he would acclaim it as a personal achievement. However,
since the shoe is on the other foot, Netanyahu and his colleagues are doing everything
possible to hamper Lapid’s efforts to finally reach an agreement with Lebanon.
In Lebanon, Aoun is known to have lots of
political opponents across the spectrum, some of whom are influential figures within
the ruling elite who do not want to lend any sort of political capital to a
president who is presumably in the process of exiting office.
Regardless of its
seemingly escalating rhetoric from time to time, it is important to realise
that Hezbollah’s position vis-a-vis this specific issue has been driven recently
by “realpolitik” due to the country’s severe economic crisis. Actually, the
calculated surge in Nasrallah’s public threats (to target Israel’s gas installations in
the Karish
field during the outgoing summer was largely meant to propagate a public
sentiment of gratitude among ordinary Lebanese citizens who should be—from
Nasrallah’s perspective—crediting Hezbollah’s intransigence on the issue. The
idea is that without Hezbollah, Lebanon wouldn’t be capable of reaching a
fairly solid deal with Israel.
Some analysts believe that
Hezbollah’s rising involvement in setting-up the daily governmental agenda has
led to a growing sense of responsibility among its rank and file. While this
may have pushed Hezbollah’s leadership to acknowledge the necessity of
addressing at least some of the Lebanese state’s national priorities, there are
other commentators who argue that Hezbollah expects to earn some of the
dividends from gas extraction and production. This is especially due to the
fact that the organisation has been suffering financial hardship since its involvement
in the Syrian war, besides reeling from international sanctions still imposed
on Iran, as well as US sanctions against Hezbollah itself.
Hezbollah also realises
the numerous impediments hindering Lebanon’s capacity to develop its own
natural gas industry, which has been lagging behind for more than a decade as
the country plunged into vicious cycles of quasi-collapsing economy, recurrent
institutional vacuums, and Hezbollah’s entanglement in regional conflicts.
Both Israel and Lebanon
have a mutual interest in resolving their maritime border dispute. Israel is keen to earn a
significant portion of gas exports to Europe in conjunction with the steady
hike in global demand after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That orientation
was clearly reflected by the EU deal with Israel and Egypt in June 2022.
In parallel, Lebanon’s top
politicians are trying to win back public support. By adopting a populist
rhetoric that generally overestimates the economic dividends of natural gas
exploration, although it is still by far a non-revenue-generating sector. It is
worth acknowledging that while the likelihood of an imminent deal with Israel
is on the rise—and even if this development expedited the process by which the
“Total-Eni” consortium would immediately resume its drilling in the Lebanese
waters—experts believe that it will likely take at least five to seven years to
ascertain whether there are sufficient amounts of gas reserves for commercial
use.
"A deal would mark one step forward, but it does not mean that
Lebanon has become a gas- or oil-producing country," said Marc Ayoub, an
associate fellow at the American University of Beirut's Issam Fares Institute.
Aside from the economic
benefits, the geopolitical implications of a maritime border agreement between
Israel and Lebanon should never be underestimated. Ostensibly, it is true that
such a deal—if concluded—would be far from being a formal peace treaty, bearing
in mind that not only Hezbollah but also a considerable segment of the Lebanese
public still rejects or do not feel at ease with the idea of normalising
relations with Israel. Against this backdrop, official sources in Beirut lately
excluded the option of any ceremonial event in which Lebanese and Israeli
representatives can be gathered for signing the prospective deal. Instead,
these sources believe that each side would unilaterally notify the UN with the
agreed-upon maritime coordinates.
However, it won’t be an
overstatement to consider the agreement as a de-facto termination of the state
of war between the two nations, as it will most probably create a sensible
incentive for Hezbollah to further maintain calm along the borders. In addition, the final
deal may stipulate the possibility of locating the Israeli and Lebanese gas
platforms within a short distance from each other, thus making it practically
harder for Hezbollah to target Israel’s offshore interests in the future.
Perhaps more
significantly, an upcoming trajectory of that sort will reignite the on/off
controversy around the projected role of the still heavily armed Hezbollah,
whether inside Lebanon or on regional matters extending beyond Israel. It will
be intriguing to find out whether any sort of a deal between Lebanon and Israel
will affect the political calculus not only in the case of the latter, but also
in core Gulf states—notably Saudi Arabia and UAE—which already share the view
that Hezbollah remains the forefront of Iran’s regional proxies.
Concluding
this rather convoluted narrative I have sometimes felt “all out at sea.” Let’s hope it ends well.
Gmar
Chatima Tova.
Beni 6th
of October, 2022.
