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On Wednesday, Lebanon and Israel held technical discussions on the demarcation of the border, in the second round of negotiations in the Naqoura border region of southern Lebanon under the auspices of the United Nations and US mediation.
Negotiations began on the 14th of this month between the two countries, which consider themselves at war and aspire to share oil resources in regional waters, after years of mediation undertaken by Washington, which acts as a mediator in the talks.
The session lasted about four hours. It was carried out away from the media at a border point belonging to the United Nations force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), in the presence of United Nations representatives and the US diplomat John DeRoucher, who facilitates negotiations between the Two parts.
“The atmosphere of the meeting was positive (…), and each delegation presented its proposal and demands to the other without being able to give answers in this regard,” a Lebanese source who has been accompanying the negotiations told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The discussion will continue in a session that will be held tomorrow, Thursday, starting at 10:00 am (08:00 GMT), according to the National News Agency.
Wednesday’s session is, according to Laurie Haitien, director of the Institute for Governance of Natural Resources in the Middle East and North Africa, “the first technical meeting after the first knowledge session and during which the ground rules for the negotiation”.
Lebanon insists on the purely technical nature of indirect negotiations aimed exclusively at demarcating maritime borders, while Israel speaks of direct negotiations.
The president of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, stressed on Wednesday that “it is not possible, neither soon nor from afar, to accept that the demarcation negotiations lead to normalization with the Israeli enemy, which is being negotiated with clear mechanisms.”
He said the negotiations “are aimed exclusively at stabilizing Lebanon’s rights to invest in all its wealth without increasing or decreasing.”
For its part, the Israeli government considered in a statement on Tuesday that the Israeli delegation aims through the meetings “to explore the possibility of reaching an agreement on defining maritime borders between countries, in a way that allows the development of natural resources in the region “.
In 2018, Lebanon signed the first contract to explore gas and oil in two areas of its territorial waters, one of which, known as Block No. 9, is in the part disputed with Israel. Consequently, Lebanon has no option to operate in this territory except after the borders are demarcated.
“Bad site?”
The negotiations concern a marine area that extends to about 860 square kilometers, according to a map sent in 2011 to the United Nations, and Lebanon later considered it based on erroneous estimates.
The Lebanese state begins negotiations, as Haitian explains, “from the beginning of demanding the maximum that can be obtained under the roof of international law and the law of the sea, that is, it wants to go beyond the 860 square kilometers, which it does part of the Karish gas field on the Lebanese side. ” .
It is not known what the Israeli position will be on this, especially since Karish is an open field and Israel was supposed to start production operations in it next year before there was a delay with the outbreak of the new Corona virus.
Analysts note that Lebanon begins the path of demarcation under difficult circumstances with accelerating economic collapse and US sanctions targeting Hezbollah and the political officials of its allied parties.
Haitian believes that Lebanon “wants to send a signal to the Lebanese, Israeli and American negotiators not to sit at the negotiating table from a position of weakness” and, therefore, “is expanding the circle of its demands based on legal arguments “.
Lebanon has always insisted in the past on linking the demarcation of maritime borders with land borders, but the negotiations will focus solely on maritime borders, provided that the demarcation of land borders is discussed, according to the United Nations, within the framework of the periodic tripartite meeting that has been held for years.
An assault on journalists
As in the first session, journalists and photographers were not allowed to reach the meeting site, with the army and UNIFIL forces blocking the road leading to it and patrolling the area, while helicopters from UNIFIL were seen flying overhead, according to an AFP photographer in Naqoura.
When a group of Lebanese journalists was inside the city of Naqoura to monitor the meeting place from the closest possible distance, a Lebanon TV team was attacked by three young men, who demanded that they leave. And they broke their equipment, according to the channel’s correspondent on Twitter. The correspondent for the Al-Nahar newspaper claimed that the youths identified themselves as Hezbollah and asked all the journalists who were on a hill overlooking the negotiating site to leave immediately, which is what happened.
In a tweet, the interim government’s Information Minister, Nada Abdel Samad, described what happened as “a reprehensible matter that requires the intervention of the relevant security services to preserve the safety of journalists and the dignity of the profession.”
On the eve of the first negotiating session, Hezbollah, which is Israel’s arch enemy, and its ally Amal Movement, objected to the inclusion of the Lebanese delegation, headed by Pilot Brigadier General Bassam Yassin, with civilian figures, considering this to be “in recognition of the Israeli logic that wants any form of normalization.”
