Members of the UNIFIL patrol the coastal road in Naqoura, the southernmost Lebanese town by the border with Israel, on October 24, 2022. (Credit : MAHMOUD ZAYYAT / AFP)
Israel and Lebanon will sign on Thursday the maritime border agreement, negotiated under the auspices of the United States and paving the way for the exploitation of gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. The information was announced Sunday night by the US envoy Amos Hochstein and confirmed Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
"On Thursday, we will sign the historic agreement with Lebanon. Israel will become in the near future an important supplier of gas to Europe," said Lapid during a meeting in Tel Aviv with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, according to a statement issued by his office.
Press reports indicated a possible signing on Thursday in Naqoura, a city in southern Lebanon bordering Israel where the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) is based. While Lapid confirmed the date of Thursday, he did not specify the modalities for signing the text.
Amos Hochstein had already said Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that the deal will "hopefully" be signed this Thursday.
"I think that this is a really great development, a historic agreement between two enemy countries," he said.
Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is campaigning against Lapid for the Nov. 1 legislative elections, had criticized the agreement with Lebanon and said it should be put to a vote in the Parliament or even a referendum. Similarly in Lebanon, Members of Parliament had pushed for the maritime border agreement to pass through Parliament's approval, which Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri later said that the agreement was "not an agreement with Israel" and therefore, didn't need to be discussed in Parliament.
In the aftermath, various Israeli right-wing organizations had filed four appeals to the Supreme Court against the agreement, arguing that it should receive the support of Parliament at a time when the Lapid government has lost its majority, which has also catalyzed the holding of elections. But on Sunday morning, three judges of Israel's highest court "unanimously decided to reject these four appeals," implying that the agreement did not need the green light of Parliament but only that of the government. The Israeli government is due to hold a special meeting at 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) Thursday at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, officials told AFP.
After intense indirect negotiations under the umbrella of the United States, Israel and Lebanon announced earlier this month that they had reached an agreement to delineate the maritime border between the two neighbors, officially in a state of war, and to remove obstacles to the exploitation of gas deposits.
Under the agreement, the Karish gas field is located entirely in Israeli waters. Lebanon, for its part, will have full rights to explore and exploit the Qana reservoir, located further north-east, part of which lies in Israeli territorial waters. But "Israel will be remunerated" by the firm operating Qana "for its rights over any deposits," according to the text.
The start of the Karish field will allow Israel to increase its gas production and thus boost its deliveries by pipeline to Egypt, to then liquefy it and transport it by ship to Europe, which is seeking to diversify its supplies.
For the time being, Israel operates the Tamar and Leviathan fields in the Eastern Mediterranean and has indicated that it wants to start production on Karish quickly.