Lebanon Agrees to Talk with Israel on Maritime Borders

[duluxe]

For the last decade, Israel has been discovering huge undersea deposits of natural gas in the Tamar and Leviathan fields under the Mediterranean, and is now producing that gas both for its own use and for sale to Egypt and Jordan. Lebanon, meanwhile, has stood on the sidelines, needing to demarcate its maritime border with Israel before it can begin exploration, discovery, and production of its own gas, but afraid to have anything to do with the Jewish state, for fear of Hezbollah’s reaction. Now that is about to change.....


Direct talks between Israel and Lebanon are slated to begin next week [in mid-October] over the maritime border between the two countries. Finagling an agreement will allow Lebanon to explore offshore gas fields and potentially produce and sell gas, as Israel has long done.

Negotiations on the demarcation of the border could have taken place a decade ago when large gas fields were discovered in the waters of the Mediterranean. But Lebanon dragged its feet and refused any contact with Israel, as part of the notion that the very existence of negotiations between the two countries constitutes some sort of legitimization of Israel’s existence….

 

[duluxe]

In a case of geopolitical cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face, Lebanon put off by a decade any talks on demarcation of its maritime border with Israel. The Israelis pushed ahead in both exploration and production of undersea gas deposits, while the Lebanese sat glumly watching, its political class afraid of antagonizing Hezbollah by entering into talks with the Zionist enemy.

For the last few years, Lebanon’s economy has been in free fall. Mismanagement and corruption have reached staggering levels. When Lebanese came out to protest against the “permanent government” last fall, Hezbollah fighters suppressed, with violence, the non-violent protesters. Hezbollah has a large presence in the Parliament, in the cabinet, and even controls, as one of its willing non-Shi’a collaborators, the Maronite President Michel Aoun. Hezbollah is part of the problem of, not the solution to, that mismanagement and corruption decried by the protesters. Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has amassed a personal fortune of $250 million, which provides a good idea of how he views financial corruption. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 80% of its value in the last year; unemployment is above 20% (and among the young has reached 40%), more than half of the Lebanese now live below the poverty line. The capital, Beirut, lies partly in ruins, the result of the catastrophic August 4 blast.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah rules the roost. It continues to hide its 150,000 missiles and rockets among, and sometimes deep underneath, residential buildings, hoping to hold Lebanese civilians as hostages, who may keep Israel from launching possible attacks. The terror group keeps threatening to drag Lebanon into a war with Israel, even more devastating than the one it started in 2004; it would be a war that the Lebanese do not want but cannot prevent if Hezbollah, itself a puppet of Iran, so decides. The Lebanese Armed Forces, outgunned and outmanned by Hezbollah, which has more conventional arms than 95% of the world’s armies, refuses to move into southern Lebanon, for it doesn’t dare confront Hezbollah fighters.

With the collapse of the pound, the spreading impoverishment of the people, the rise in unemployment, and the end of foreign aid from rich Sunni states that stopped giving Lebanon aid when Hezbollah, the ally of Iran, essentially took control of the country after it had murdered Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, the Lebanese government has now been forced to at long last negotiate with Israel over maritime borders. For the only possible bright spot for the Lebanese economy, it is now understood in Beirut, will be the discovery, and production, of its own offshore natural gas deposits.

Hezbollah is now at the nadir of its support in Lebanon. It is universally blamed – despite its continued preposterous denials – for the August 4 blast of 2,750 tones of ammonium nitrates that it had haphazardly stored in Hangar 12, which was under the exclusive control of Hezbollah, at the Port of Beirut. And now the Israelis have exposed three separate missile depots belonging to Hezbollah, consisting of workshops and warehouses deep beneath residential buildings. The Israelis even made use of a video of one of the workshops, in the Al-Janah neighborhood, released by Hezbollah itself. The terror group assumed that, since it had removed the missile and missile parts, the video would appear to exculpate it. Instead the Israelis produced a point-by-point analysis of how the various machines seen on the video – to cut, smooth, and bend steel – were used in the production of precision-guided missiles. Revelations about these Hezbollah missile factories have further angered the Lebanese, and left Hezbollah reeling.

 

[syed putra]

Are you saying God has bestowed the Jewish people oil and gas as they bestowed the saudis and Kuwaitis and Qatar?

 

[syed putra]

The areas in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, turkey are some of the most lovely places to live in if there are no animosity.
Lovely weather. Lovely food. Just like in italy. Egypt used to be the food basket of the Roman empire. Thanks to fertile nile river.

 

[duluxe]

Are you saying God has bestowed the Jewish people oil and gas as they bestowed the saudis and Kuwaitis and Qatar?

You are almost there, you have to be marvellous once again with the true God's master master plan! 1967, more than 7 arab states initiated to attack Israel. Thank to the failed master plan of their fake Allah, Israel's terrritory expanded. Real vs fake imitation!

 

[syed putra]

Those 7 arab states just got their independence from Turkey. Not really well organused. Two bothers were chosen by brits to become leaders, one in Jordan, and another in Iraq. The Iraqi monarch was executed by Baath party. Jordan's survived till today.
French got syria and Lebanon from Turks. Syria granted independence only in 1946.
So those arab states are not really proficient at fighting.

 

[laksaboy]

Lebanon is one of the milder Arab Muslim countries. They like to party and their women are beautiful.

 

[JohnTan]

Are you saying God has bestowed the Jewish people oil and gas as they bestowed the saudis and Kuwaitis and Qatar?

Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, whoever curses Israel will be cursed.

moslem societies, wherever they are, usually lag behind in education, health, economic output. immigrant moslem neighbourhoods are often more dangerous and crime infested than non-moslem neighbourhoods.

 

[syed putra]

Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, whoever curses Israel will be cursed.

moslem societies, wherever they are, usually lag behind in education, health, economic output. immigrant moslem neighbourhoods are often more dangerous and crime infested than non-moslem neighbourhoods.

The jews were cursed in central Europe until recently.

 

[JohnTan]

The jews were cursed in central Europe until recently.

European societies that treated the Jews poorly either ended up with regime change or remaining in poverty. Moslem societies suffer from a double curse of being moslem and cursing Israel.