Jerusalem: Israel and Lebanon have agreed to settle a long-standing dispute over who should control a portion of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the leaders of the two nations said. This is a significant diplomatic achievement between two neighbours who are still technically at war and do not have any formal diplomatic ties.
The office of the Lebanese President Michel Aoun said the draft deal satisfied “Lebanon, meets its demands and preserves its rights to its natural wealth.”
Israeli PM Yair Lapid called the deal a “historic achievement that will strengthen Israel’s security, inject billions into Israel’s economy and ensure the stability of our northern border”. The deal settled a decades-old dispute about the location of the two countries’ exclusive economic zones in the eastern Mediterranean, demarcating where both countries have the sole right to extract resources.
In return, Israel will be compensated for any gas extracted from the region of the field known as Qana that is located inside of its exclusive economic zone. Furthermore, Lebanon has waived any rights to the neighbouring second gas deposit known as Karish, allowing Israel to collect gas there without worrying about Hezbollah retaliation. The agreement would also maintain the "buoy line," which now acts as a de facto boundary between the two nations.
Mediated by the US, the deal is much more limited than the sweeping normalisation deals that established full diplomatic ties between Israel and three Arab states in 2020, after years of Israeli isolation in West Asia. The deal nevertheless represented a significant breakthrough for two countries that have a long history of conflict. Israel occupied parts of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, and fought a month long war in 2006 with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese militia.
