A Latent Peace Treaty: The Path to Peace Relations May Not Lie Within Treaties After All
A UNIFIL vessel patrolling the Lebanese coast. Photo by: United Nations Photo
When imagining putting an end to a global conflict, we often envision the signing of a peace treaty: cameras flashing, government officials in suits, and journalists frantically documenting the monumental event as world leaders compromise their stances in hopes of securing net peace in the international arena. But what if the future of peace does not necessarily lie within such a framework? What if there was a different route to diplomacy? Economic deals may be the most effective approach to bridging conflicts and ensuring peace—or at least less fighting—in our world. The recent maritime trade deal between Lebanon and Israel, long-time adversaries, is not explicitly a peace treaty. However, its nontraditional nature may impact far more than the economy, even stabilizing the security and political environment within each country.
Before the Treaty
Lebanon and Israel have been at odds with one another for decades. Tension arose with the termination of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948. That very next day, Lebanon, along with five other Arab nations, invaded Israel in what would become the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. The scattered, post-war Palestinian people consolidated under one organization known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Spearheaded by Yasser Arafat, the group began operating from within Jordan up until their expulsion from the Jordanian kingdom in the 1970s. The PLO then reorganized and operated from within Lebanon. Their presence in Lebanon created tension between the Lebanese people, namely between the Christian-Lebanese Maronites and the Palestinian refugees and their supporters. In 1975, Civil War broke out in Lebanon, and the next major encounter between the two countries ensued as a result. In 1982, well into the Lebanese Civil War, following several combative exchanges with the PLO, Israel attacked Lebanon. The catalyst for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to England. Although it was actually not the PLO’s doing, the assassination attempt set the stage for military conflict.
Following the end of the war in 1982, Lebanon’s political, economic, and social infrastructure was left in shambles. Furthermore, the PLO’s evacuation of Lebanon created a power vacuum, leaving Hezbollah the room to gain power and consolidate there. Hezbollah is a Shiite militant organization, mainly funded by the Iranian government, that has been deemed a terrorist group by both the U.S. Secretary of State and the European Union. It poses an imminent threat to the state of Israel (and the Lebanese population) until this day. In 2006, war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah as a result of the ambush and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. This war resulted in further destruction to Lebanon’s statehood and continues to serve as a reminder and warning of the fighting that could once again resume. The new maritime agreement has the potential to minimize such hostility from reoccurring.
Upon Israel’s discovery of offshore gas reservoirs in 2009-2010, concerns about the maritime border with Lebanon arose. In 2019, these concerns grew with the newly ascertained gas field, Karish. Lebanon’s troubled economy would benefit from revenues made from the extraction of gas; however, Israel maintained that ownership of the field should fall to them. The need for such an agreement to resolve the decades-long dispute emerged fervently as a result of this uncovery.
Terms of the Agreement
The official terms of the maritime agreement were first outlined by the United States on September 29, 2020. On October 27, 2022, mediated by the U.S. State Department Energy Advisor, Amos Hochstein, the deal between Lebanon and Israel was signed. Originally, the agreement was based on the 1923 Newcombe-Palet agreement between Britain and France. The Blue Line border, a U.N. concocted line drawn along Lebanon’s southern border, was used as a foundation for the terms of this arrangement.
The current maritime deal draws boundaries in the Eastern tip of the Mediterranean Sea that defines how Israel and Lebanon will use gas and oil from the region. Under the terms of the agreement, Israel’s boundary will be recognized as five kilometers off of Rosh Hanikra, the coast of the Israeli Mediterranean coastline. Subsequently, the boundary will continue along the area known to the agreement as Line 23, which provides Lebanon with drilling rights at the Qana field while requiring the payment of a stipend to Israel for the gas which Lebanon may drill from this field. Consequently, Lebanon is provided the opportunity to reap the economic benefits of such gas exploration in the Qana field, while Israel is analogously compensated. Additionally, this deal addresses the aforementioned importance of the Karish field and allocates Israel the right to gas production at the natural gas reservoir.
Lebanon, Israel, and the United States have all declared the maritime deal as historic. Unlike the usual mores expected with diplomatic agreements, the deal was signed without a joint signing ceremony. In fact, the whole of the maritime agreement was scarcely publicized in comparison to usual political agreements. It can be inferred that the reason for the less public character of this agreement is due to the incendiary nature of the deal itself and its acknowledged fragility.
The agreement was still celebrated by both sides. Prime Minister Yair Lapid rendered it a “tremendous achievement” and even applauded Lebanon, declaring “it is not every day that an enemy country recognizes the state of Israel, in a written agreement, in view of the international community.” President Aoun similarly appraised the agreement and proclaimed his hope that it will aid in the prevention of conflict and war between the two countries. Yet, Aoun has made it clear that this was solely an economic agreement that would continue to uphold Lebanon’s foreign policy, not serving as a peace treaty with Israel; Lebanon does not recognize the state of Israel’s right to exist and continues to regard itself at war with Israel. Although not as diplomatically and publicly appealing as a peace treaty, the signing of the maritime agreement displayed that there are players willing to come to an accord on international matters, suggesting hope for the future.
Aftermath
Political Benefits
In recent years, Hezbollah has increased its military capabilities, now operating from within Syria while casting a threatening shadow onto Israel and the region. Hezbollah’s ties with Russia, Syria, and Iran indicate that a future war with Israel could escalate past the region to the international stage. Both Israel and Lebanon, as well as the international community, recognized that diffusing the tension between the two was necessary to avoid any harmful confrontation from taking place. Taking into account that a diplomatic process is not feasible between the two, the maritime agreement was the consummate way to avoid such destructive outcomes.
The success of the maritime agreement is especially significant since tensions between Hezbollah and Israel had risen along the defacto Israeli-Lebanese border in the recent months prior to the deal. In July 2022, Hezbollah sent a clear threat to Israel by launching drones at the Karish Gas Field. There was fear from both the Lebanese and Israeli governments that this would escalate and maritime negotiations would fall through. Luckily, this tension did not deter the signing of the agreement. Since it has been drafted, security tensions have eased, demonstrating the fruitful nature of the deal in mitigating fighting and hopefully, continuing to eschew any additional short-term conflict.
Despite the friction between the two entities, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, has even vouched for the agreement and deemed it a “very big victory for Lebanon.” Although Hezbollah continues to deny Israel’s existence and claims this deal does not indicate support of normalizations with the state of Israel or fortifying the future of a peace treaty, it still supplies a glimpse of a more tolerant future between the two countries.
Economic Benefits
Aside from security assurances to the Middle East, this agreement is primarily considered an economic opportunity for both countries, particularly Lebanon. Over the last decades, Lebanon’s struggling economy took several additional hits. With COVID-19, Lebanon faced an insurmountable loss of lives and a major blow to its economy. Furthermore, on August 4, 2020, the port of Beirut underwent a devastating explosion, resulting in further injury to the country’s destabilized economic state. According to the World Bank, Lebanon has embarked on its third year of economic crisis, reaching annual inflation of 201 percent in 2021. Mainly dependent on food imported from Russia and Ukraine, the current war has only made matters worse for Lebanon, creating a new level of food insecurity that the country cannot afford to address. Therefore, the maritime agreement provides critical financial aid for the Lebanese people. With this deal, Lebanon may seek economic relief by gaining the ability to grow its economy by harvesting gas from the Qana field, which benefits the two countries in a way that a peace treaty cannot. In order to alleviate the damage caused by Covid-19, the port explosion, and the Ukraine-Russia war, Lebanon is in dire need of such economic deal.
Benefits of the recently instituted deal have been evident in the past month. TotalEnergy, a French gas company, has planned to explore the Qana gas field in collaboration with the Lebanese government by 2023. The Lebanese government is looking forward to the economic prospects it will reap from such synergy with the French company. Furthermore, relations between Hezbollah and Israel have been relatively tamer in the past month since the agreement passed. The once-rising tension seems to have calmed, proving that economic agreements have the potential to facilitate more peace in the region than political agreements would. Despite the agreement being founded on an economic basis rather than a diplomatic approach, such an economic agreement sets the precedent for a potential normalization of relations between the Arab states and Israel, even if not explicitly so.
Although promising, the delicacy of the situation still lingers in the back of everyone’s minds as they anxiously await the further future of this deal. The signing of this deal preceded political milestones for both governments: Aoun’s term ended on October 31st and Israel’s elections occurred on November 1st. The Israeli elections culminated in the right wing’s reacquisition of power, while in Lebanon, Aoun’s seat was left open after a six-year term. In spite of both governments recently shifting, both sides have not actively opposed the agreement as a whole thus far. Benjamin Netanyahu, the newly elected Israeli prime minister, claimed that he would “neutralize” the agreement in his campaign. However, this seems to have been a political ploy in order to secure his seat as prime minister. Even if Netanyahu did attempt to scrap the deal, the United States has reassured Lebanon that doing so will be impossible: insinuating that in an attempt to terminate the deal with Lebanon, Netanyahu would have to confront the United States.
And so, while the maritime agreement is seemingly tenuous in the current state of both countries, its success may be a glimpse into a more docile forthcoming between the two. The maritime treaty between Lebanon and Israel demonstrates how the key to future successful international relations lies within economically driven agreements, and not within peace treaties after all.
Ann Mizrahi is a Staff Writer at the Columbia Political Review majoring in Political Science and Psychology. Ann is interested in international relations in the Middle East and believes it is crucial that individuals learn more about the complex nuances of the region.