Lebanon and Israel Take a Cautious Step toward Normalization

Tomorrow, American-mediated talks are set to begin between Beirut and Jerusalem over the precise location of the border between the two countries’ coastal waters. The two states are legally at war, as Lebanon declared war on the nascent Jewish state in 1948, and, although it signed an armistice agreement a year later, a formal peace has never been concluded. But the presence of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean has given Lebanon an impetus to resolve the dispute over the maritime border. Alan Baker writes:

Regrettably, Lebanon’s refusal [for the past 30 years] to enter into a direct negotiations with Israel has prevented any possibility of resolving the issue by . . . peaceful means, despite the fact that bilateral maritime border delimitation agreements in the Mediterranean Sea have been signed between Cyprus and Lebanon in 2007, and between Cyprus and Israel in 2010, and despite a series of attempts to solve the dispute through indirect talks between Israel and Lebanon between 2011 and 2012.

It is precisely this departure that makes the negotiations a milestone, regardless of their outcome. Baker continues:

A further significant factor rendering the upcoming negotiation with Lebanon unique is the fact that it comes on the heels of the September 15, 2020, Abraham Accords, signed in Washington by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom of Bahrain, and the U.S. The signing of these accords, in and of itself, heralds a new era of acceptance, recognition, and developing normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, which cannot go unnoticed by Lebanon as it enters into a new, and hopefully more successful negotiation process with Israel on their joint maritime border.

As Baker notes, the president of the Lebanese parliament, himself a Shiite Muslim, has for the first time begun referring to Israel without using the word “enemy”—another sign that the winds of change blowing through the Middle East have touched Lebanon as well.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Israel diplomacy, Israeli gas, Lebanon, Natural Gas

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF