Last week, the U.S. envoy for energy affairs Amos Hochstein traveled to Beirut to negotiate the delineation of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon. A successful agreement would, in principle, allow both nations to exploit their respective offshore natural-gas reserves. Eran Lerman explains why these efforts are unlikely to succeed, especially given Lebanon’s habit of increasing its demands whenever a compromise is in sight:

Despite its recent electoral setback, Hizballah and its allies still have a firm grip on most of the levers of power in the country.

Negotiations went nowhere last year after Lebanon inexplicably abandoned its previous claim based on “Line 23” . . . and demanded to expand its claim southwards to “Line 29.” The recurrent pattern of asking for more and more has made a mockery of the ongoing attempt to resolve the problem diplomatically. . . . Israel [was willing to accept Line 23 in 2011, and] thus consented to a division of the disputed area, most of which was offered to Lebanon.

In October 2020, . . . a Lebanese team led by a military officer met with an Israeli delegation led by the director of the Ministry of Energy. A U.S. representative attended the meeting. As it turned out, the Lebanese delegation did not talk about the resolution of the previous dispute but staked out a series of new unsubstantiated claims, unrelated to anything but the apparent expectation that they could once again blackmail Israel and the United States into further concessions.

Choosing conflict will not deter the corporations that already have an established presence in Israel. It will, however, frighten away all who may still consider the prospect of investing in Lebanon’s gas fields.

As for Hizballah, its leader Hassan Nasrallah declared in May that he is suspicious of any negotiations with the U.S., and strongly opposes any dealings “with Hochstein, Frankenstein, or any other Stein.” His meaning is not hard to discern.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.