Israel- Lebanon maritime border talks to begin today
‘ Not similar to process with UAE,’ official sources say
Israel and Lebanon are set to begin negotiations to set their maritime border on Wednesday after a decade of aborted attempts to start talks.
The sides, together with John Desrocher, the US ambassador to Algeria, who will mediate, will meet in a tent at the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon ( UNIFIL) in Naqoura, Lebanon, next to the border with Israel.
The Israeli and Lebanese delegations will be professionals and there will be no political representation. The Israeli team will be led by Energy Ministry director- general Udi Adiri, while Lebanon nominated Hadi Hashem, an official from its Foreign Ministry, after Hezbollah complained that sending a diplomat would make the talks political.
The senior Energy Ministry source said the negotiations were “not a similar process to what happened with the United Arab Emirates,” with which Israel signed a normalization pact last month.
“We have a pragmatic, realistic attitude. We have a defined goal to solve the disagreement and set a border for our economic waters... The goal is very limited and clear,” the source said.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said this week that the talks would only be about the countries’ economic waters and not about peace or normalization.
“We must have realistic
expectations about negotiations with Lebanon,” he told the Knesset Channel. “It’s not talks for peace and normalization; rather, it’s an attempt to solve a technical- economic dispute that for 10 years has delayed the development of natural resources in the sea for the benefit of the nations of the region.”
The dispute over setting the maritime border has been ongoing for a decade and it has held up plans on both sides to develop gas fields. The Energy Ministry has, therefore, taken the lead and is treating the dispute as an economic issue. It concerns a triangle- shaped slice off the coast. Only about 2% of the area would be in Israel’s economic waters.
The Energy Ministry source said that the delay has caused a potential loss of billions of dollars to each side every year.
Lebanon, however, has more to gain, since it imports billions of dollars’ worth of oil, diesel and liquefied gas each year, while Israel uses its own natural gas resources, and some is even exported.
The source expressed hope that if the Lebanese side takes a pragmatic approach and doesn’t “come with the attitude of scoring a victory over the ‘ Zionist enemy,’” the dispute could be resolved in a few months.
While there are no guarantees that the talks will be successful, the Energy Ministry views the fact that they’re simply taking place as a positive development.
“If they succeed, good,” he said. “If not, we can be fine without it. We have already developed Tamar and Leviathan [ gas fields] and save
money by not importing gas. We are set for the coming years.”
American and Lebanese officials have said land disputes between Jerusalem and Beirut will be handled through a separate channel, but the Energy Ministry source said that there was no final agreement on that aspect, yet.
“We want to give the sea issue a chance, so we prefer not to tie it to the land border,” the source said. “The separation slightly increases the chance to reach a sea deal.”
Negotiations over the Blue Line, the name for the land border with Lebanon, would likely focus on Mount Dov, an area of the Golan Heights at the intersection of the LebaneseSyrian border. Lebanon and Syria had a dispute over the territory. Israel captured the Golan Heights, including Mount Dov, in 1967, and applied sovereignty in the area in 1981.
When Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, the UN certified the departure, but Hezbollah and others in Lebanon still consider Israel to be occupying Mount Dov, which they call Shaba Farms.
According to the Bible, Mount Dov is where God made the “Covenant of the Pieces” with Abraham. •
with Muslim leaders from the Arab community. Our major goal is to cooperate with them and continue this cooperation because these leaders have a very positive effect on the people.
“We have more than 50 working plans with the Arab municipalities. Our major target is to convert them from red to green, and we have succeeded in this task. The result is that only two Arab towns are today classified as ‘ red.’ A month ago, we had more than 30 Arab towns that were classified as red areas. Today, as I mentioned, we have only two Arab towns that are still ‘ red’ out of 29 red towns in Israel. We are talking about a significant decrease. I hope this trend will continue so as to improve the situation in the Arab society.”
Saif acknowledged that there was a decrease in the number of tests, but said that this applied not only to the Arab sector, but across the entire country.
“If we check the tests per 10,000, we are talking about 18 tests [ in the Arab sector] per 10,000,” he said. “We have 6% of these tests that are positive. In the last few days, we see a decrease in the positive results of the tests in Arab society. A month ago, we were over 16% of the positive results out of these tests. These are encouraging results.”
On the other hand, Saif pointed out, there has been a significant increase in deaths in the Arab community. During the first wave of the virus outbreak in the Arab community, he said, there were only five deaths. “Today, we have about 328 deaths in the Arab sector, which is about 16% of the total deaths in the country.”
He said he was concerned that when the lockdown is lifted, Arab Israelis would think that it’s fine to hold weddings and public gatherings as if the crisis had ended.
“That will be dangerous because all the things we succeeded in doing in the past two months will be eliminated, especially if we go back to the weddings and other gatherings,” Saif cautioned. “One month ago, there were about 10,700 active coronavirus cases in the Arab sector. Currently, we are talking about 5,500 active cases out of almost 53,000 active cases in Israel.”
Samir Mahameed, the mayor of Umm el- Fahm, told Post that he too was worried that the lifting of the lockdown would see an increase in the number of weddings and other public gatherings.
The lockdown, Mahameed said, did help to a certain extent in curbing the spread of coronavirus in the Arab sector. “There were no weddings during the lockdown,” he noted. “But we are now worried that after the lockdown is lifted, there will be an increase in the number of weddings because many people had postponed their weddings until the end of the restrictions.”
The mayor said that his municipality was now working to increase residents’ awareness
concerning the dangers of the pandemic. “We are also in contact with the police and other bodies responsible for enforcing the law and health regulations,” Mahameed added. “We want them to take action against those who don’t listen to us. Weddings should be held only in accordance with the regulations. We won’t allow any violations.”
Mahameed said that Umm el- Fahm was now classified as green after it had been red in recent weeks.
“We hired people to enforce the restrictions in our city,” he said. “They made sure that people adhered to the restrictions. That’s how we managed to reduce the number of infections. Today, we have 111 active cases in Umm el- Fahm – three of them in critical condition in hospital and another five in moderate condition. We had 2,500 infections a few weeks ago. A month ago, we had about 900 active cases. Sadly, Umm el- Fahm has lost 15 of its residents to the virus in the past 45 days. People are now more aware of the dangers of this disease.” •