![\"\"](\"http:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhy did Biden\u2019s energy envoy issue a poison pill that is sure not only to kill the deal but give Hezbollah a new reason to fight?<\/p>\n
When President Biden appointed his personal friend and former Obama administration energy coordinator Amos Hochstein as his own energy envoy last summer, it seemed that the decades-old deadlock between Lebanon and Israel over their sea boundary, and potentially tens of billions of dollars in energy resources, might finally be resolved.<\/p>\n
Hochstein was assumed to be trusted by the Israelis (he was born in Israel and served in the IDF in the early 1990s). He was perceived positively by some of the main Lebanese actors as a foe of a former U.S. envoy, Ambassador Frederic Hof, who had tabled a deal ten years before known as the \u201cHof Line\u201d boundary that was widely seen in Lebanon as exceptionally unfair. And he came with a deep background in the complexities of the energy sector.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most importantly, however, the Biden administration seemed hungry to claim a success in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although a mutually agreed-upon sea boundary between Lebanon and Israel would fall far short of any Abraham Accord-type arrangement, such a deal would represent a UN-recognized boundary between a democratically elected Arab government and Israel. Given the extensive power of the armed Lebanese political party Hezbollah, which Israel considers its most formidable non-state enemy, the removal of a large offshore area from the regular military exchanges between the two sides onshore would also help to structurally diminish the prospects of another devastating war in the Middle East, something the Biden administration very much wants to avoid.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, eight months on, according to several senior Lebanese officials directly involved in the negotiations, the deal that Hochstein unveiled a few weeks ago in Beirut, one which apparently has Israel\u2019s blessing, falls far short of Lebanon\u2019s minimum acceptable position. As a result, the talks are in imminent danger of collapsing, perhaps in the coming weeks. Asked about this prospect, the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Beirut both declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Hochstein, it seems, badly misunderstood the Lebanese side. First, in proposing that Israel and Lebanon share a potentially rich hydrocarbon field between them (known as the Qana Prospect after a town in South Lebanon), he has ensured that any deal is dead on arrival. No Lebanese political actor can muster the votes to essentially go into business with a state that is officially an enemy and regularly in military conflict with the most powerful political and military actor in the country, Hezbollah. Hochstein surely should know this (a similar offer he made at the end of the Obama administration was rejected by Lebanon), which is why it is especially confounding that after all of his discussions with different Lebanese parties, he still ended up proposing a \u201cunitization agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Was he lulled into thinking that Hezbollah\u2019s uncharacteristic quiet on the maritime issue over many years offered a rare opportunity for initiating material cooperation between Lebanon and Israel? If this was his assumption, he burned a golden opportunity consecrated when Hezbollah delegated the indirect negotiations to its two allies, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and President Michel Aoun.<\/p>\n
Indeed, instead of using Hezbollah\u2019s self-removal to box it into accepting a deal seen as reasonable by the vast majority of Lebanese on legal, commercial and nationalistic grounds, rather than on imperatives related to an enduring struggle against Israel, Hochstein\u2019s field-sharing proposal played right into Hezbollah\u2019s hands. In fact, Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad felt confident enough a few weeks ago, despite the country\u2019s mounting economic problems, to deliver the party\u2019s first fiery \u201credline\u201d speech on the issue: \u201cThey tell us\u2026it may turn out that you will need to share the gas field with the Israelis\u2026We\u2019d rather leave the gas buried underwater until the day comes when we can prevent the Israelis from touching a single drop of our waters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hochstein\u2019s \u201cpoison pill\u201d deal, as some Lebanese are now calling it, also squandered a second opening the Lebanese side has offered since the fall of 2020 when the Trump administration resumed Washington\u2019s mediation efforts.<\/p>\n
Although it is the source of much political intrigue and enmity in Beirut, for whatever internal reasons Lebanon opened the indirect talks on the basis of a new, extended boundary claim known as \u201cLine 29\u201d but without officializing it as countries are legally entitled to do given relevant changes in international legal rulings. As a result, and probably for the first time in modern maritime negotiations, the Lebanese team came to the table with a well-grounded \u201cmaximalist\u201d position (Line 29) but without having actually deposited it de jure at the United Nations.<\/p>\n
This goodwill concession over an additional 1,430 square kilometers of sea unofficially claimed by Lebanon prevented the likely early breakdown of talks by allowing Israel and private companies like Greece\u2019s Energen and America\u2019s Halliburton to legally move forward with exploitation activities over the last year and a half in the energy-rich Karish field, as well as its northern environs (including the southern part of the Qana Prospect). All of the former and some of the latter are outside of Lebanon\u2019s current \u201cminimalist\u201d legal claim known as \u201cLine 23.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of course, Lebanon\u2019s restraint in not officializing its new \u201cmaximalist\u201d Line 29 also gave Lebanese politicians a convenient way to accept a deal far less than what their own experts and lawyers have been saying for years should be granted to Beirut. After all, anything roughly comparable to Lebanon\u2019s current \u201cminimalist\u201d Line 23 could technically be spun as a victory.<\/p>\n
Hochstein\u2019s proposal, however, that Israel and Lebanon go into business together by sharing the Qana Prospect, decisively quashed any such maneuverability.<\/p>\n
Should talks break down in the coming period, as now seems likely, at least two negative outcomes are almost certain. First, with the talks dead and the country sinking ever deeper into a \u201cDeliberate Depression,\u201d Lebanese leaders will have little to lose from officializing the \u201cmaximalist\u201d boundary claim they are legally entitled to assert and then taking punitive action in multiple fora. This will put significant pressure on private companies operating in the (soon to be) \u201cdisputed\u201d Karish field as well as the Qana Prospect.<\/p>\n
Second, and perhaps most important, by offering an unworkable deal that leads to a negotiation breakdown, the U.S. and Israel will be handing Hezbollah a powerful new raison d\u2019\u00eatre as a resistance group by creating a \u201cMaritime Shebaa,\u201d in reference to the strategic strip of land between Lebanon, Syria and Israel that is occupied by Israel. Lebanon claims this land and considers military operations there, including by Hezbollah, as both legal and necessary in order to liberate it. The United Nations considers Shebaa to be part of Israeli-occupied Syrian land, but Syria itself supports Lebanon\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n
In short, a \u201cMaritime Shebaa\u201d will be far more evocative and unifying for more Lebanese \u2014 to Hezbollah\u2019s distinct political benefit \u2014 than the issue of \u201cLand Shebaa\u201d since Lebanon\u2019s case is much stronger in the water, just as the loss of potentially tens of billions of much-needed dollars to Israel will be daily more evident to everyone. This will likely lead to periodic military engagements in the area that negatively impact drilling and perhaps lead to deaths. At worst, this part of the Eastern Mediterranean sea could become the spark for a devastating new regional war.<\/p>\n
Finally, at a time when Europe\u2019s current and future gas needs have suddenly been destabilized following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, any further disruption of international supplies will only create more negative fallout. Just a few weeks ago, Israel and Energen announced that Karish had been hooked up to the national grid, with gas expected to flow in the coming months. Crucially, this extra capacity is now being seriously considered for export to the European Union via Egypt as early as September, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials. A combination of Lebanese legal actions and Hezbollah threats could substantially disrupt this schedule, however, not to mention harm Lebanon\u2019s own hoped-for exploitation of its own blocks.<\/p>\n
Given these dangerous consequences, the Biden administration should urgently consider whether proposing a different deal might better serve U.S., Israeli and Lebanese interests as well as regional stability. As it currently stands, there is a narrowing window for creating a stable sea boundary between Israel and Lebanon, one that must avoid, first and foremost, the \u201cpoison pill\u201d of a shared field by trading Israel\u2019s imminent exploitation of all of the Karish field for Lebanon\u2019s exploitation of the Qana Prospect (which, it should be recognized, is less certain of producing hydrocarbons).<\/p>\n
Such an arrangement would likely have to go beyond Lebanon\u2019s current de jure Line 23 claim with a \u201czig-zag\u201d around the Qana Prospect in order to be politically viable in Lebanon. This will undoubtedly be difficult for Israel to swallow since successive governments have long hoped Washington could extract for them a large chunk of the sea behind Lebanon\u2019s current claim (as the \u201cHof Line\u201d proposed a decade ago) and part of the Qana Prospect. But this compromise will also be difficult for Lebanon to accept. Beirut severely undercut its own position by officially sticking with a poorly grounded, \u201cminimalist\u201d boundary claim that failed to take advantage of international legal rulings over the last decade. Generations of Lebanese will have to bear some measure of loss for this.<\/p>\n
For both sides, however, and for the U.S., all of these perceived losses should pale in comparison to the immediate and long-term benefits of finally having a stable maritime boundary between Israel and Lebanon, with the stable exploitation of valuable natural resources and the immediate strategic benefit of de-escalating \u2014 rather than inflaming \u2014 one conflict in a part of the world that simply can\u2019t bear another.<\/p>\n
Written by
\nNicholas Noe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why did Biden\u2019s energy envoy issue a poison pill that is sure not only to kill the deal but give Hezbollah a new reason to fight? When President Biden appointed his personal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,23],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,81,82,86,87,88,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,112,113,121,122,134,137,139,146,148,160,174,176,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,239,244,246,249,250,252,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,283,285,288],"class_list":["post-6105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lebanon","category-politics","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-closure-of-nuclear-power-plants","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-decarbonization","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-market","tag-energy-peace","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-fuels-russian-gas-oil-and-gas-natural-gas","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-liquefied-natural-gas","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-renewable-energy","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-russia-in-the-european-energy-sector","tag-russian-sanctions","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-ukrain","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}