Israeli and Lebanese leaders finalised a US-brokered maritime demarcation on Thursday, bringing a measure of accommodation between the enemy States, as they eye offshore energy exploration, Reuters reports.
Leaders from Lebanon, Israel and the United States have all hailed the deal as “historic“, but the possibility of a wider diplomatic breakthrough remains slim.
As a result, there was no joint signing ceremony: Lebanese President, Michel Aoun, signed a letter approving the deal at his Palace in Baabda, in the presence of the US official who mediated the Accord, Amos Hochstein.
“We have heard about the Abraham Accords. Today there is a new era. It could be the Amos Hochstein Accord,” said top Lebanese negotiator and deputy Parliament Speaker, Elias Bou Saab, referring to the 2020 US-brokered normalisation of ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid, signed separately in Jerusalem, saying the deal was a “tremendous achievement” that had produced Lebanon’s de facto recognition of Israel.
“It is not every day that an enemy country recognises the State of Israel, in a written agreement, in view of the international community,” Lapid told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.
But Aoun, later, said the deal was purely “technical” and would have “no political dimensions or impacts that contradict Lebanon’s foreign policy”.
Lower-level delegations from each country headed to the United Nations’ peacekeeping base at Naqoura along their contested land border, which has yet to be delineated.
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