Israel, Lebanon maritime border talks to begin Wednesday

A senior Energy Ministry source explained that the negotiations are “not a similar process to what happened with the United Arab Emirates,” with which Israel signed a peace treaty last month.

By LAHAV HARKOV
An Israeli naval vessel sails in the Mediterranean sea near the border with Lebanon, as Mount Carmel and the Israeli city of Haifa are seen in the background December 16, 2013 (photo credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
An Israeli naval vessel sails in the Mediterranean sea near the border with Lebanon, as Mount Carmel and the Israeli city of Haifa are seen in the background December 16, 2013
(photo credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
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 US Ambassador to Algeria John Desrocher, 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 a 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. 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,” he said.
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 Lebanese-Syrian 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.


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