BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanon and the Zionist regime have separately signed a deal, which resolve their maritime dispute in the Mediterranean Sea even though they remain technically at war.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun signed a letter approving the deal at the presidential palace in Baabda on Thursday morning in the presence of Amos Hochstein, the U.S. envoy for energy affairs who mediated the accord. Zionist prime minister Yair Lapid signed the deal separately in Al-Quds.
The agreement was later submitted to U.S. officials at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in Lebanon’s southernmost border point of Naqoura, and signed by both sides in separate rooms.
Aoun stressed that nothing had changed in relations with the Zionist regime with the signing of the deal.
“Demarcating the southern maritime border is technical work that has no political implications,” he said.
Top Lebanese negotiator Elias Bou Saab said the deal marked the beginning of a “new era” for Lebanon. Under the deal, Lebanon receives full rights in the Qana field.
The occupying regime and Lebanon have technically been at war for decades. The occupying regime invaded Lebanon in 1982 during the latter’s civil war and occupied Lebanese territory until 2000. The regime’s last military aggression against Lebanon was in the summer of 2006.
On Thursday evening, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement called the maritime demarcation deal with the regime a “very big victory for Lebanon and its people and resistance.”
“Our mission is complete,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, emphasizing that the deal “is not an international treaty and must not be viewed as recognition of Israel.”
“Israel received no security guarantees,” the Hezbollah chief stressed.
The U.S. mediator in the deal also admitted that the reason for the concessions made by the United States and the Zionist regime in favor of Lebanon was the fear of war.
In an interview on Thursday, Amos Hochstein noted that “War was a real threat and that if it happened, all oil and gas fields and international trade in the Mediterranean Sea and most importantly the flow of energy resources between the Persian Gulf and Europe would be disrupted.”
On a related note, well-informed sources told al-Binaa newspaper that had it not been for the threat made by Hezbollah, which fortified the official Lebanese position, the Zionist regime would have started the extraction in Karish according to the plan and disregarded all understandings.
In an interview with Al-Hurra in mid-June, Hochstein said that Lebanon has to “stop thinking” about being right regarding the indirect maritime border talks. He claimed that Lebanon has “nothing,” in a clear message to Lebanese negotiators to accept the U.S.-Zionist provisions.