The Israeli government approved a historic border deal with Lebanon at an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers on Thursday.
“The Israeli government has just approved the agreement on the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon. It is not every day that a hostile country recognizes the State of Israel through a written agreement and before the international community”Lapid said at the Israeli government meeting, noting that the pact is a milestone in terms of “security, economy and energy”.
“Both sides have taken final steps to bring the agreement into effect and sent final documents to the United Nations in the presence of the United States,” said Joe Biden, quoted in a White House statement.
The agreement to delimit the maritime border with Lebanon will be signed this Thursday at an official ceremony in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli executive’s approval marks the final step in the final signing of the pact.
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun approved the agreement Thursday morning at the presidential palace in Beirut, in the presence of Amos Hochstein, a US mediator, who led “indirect” negotiations between the two countries – who do not maintain diplomatic relations.
Later, representatives of the two governments will travel to the border town of Nagoura, on Lebanese territory, where the United Nations Provisional Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is based, for the final signing of the agreement.
The pact marks the first demarcation of the maritime borders between the two countries and ends a long-running dispute over gas-rich areas in the Mediterranean.
The negotiations that started this year have lasted several months.
The relevant maritime area consists of 860 square kilometers of sea over the Karish and Qana gas fields.
The agreement allows Israel to exploit the Karish deposit and Lebanon to exploit the Qana area.
This Thursday, the company Energean announced that it has already started extracting gas from Karish and the company TotalEnergies has already been commissioned to explore the Qana field.
The deal, reached and signed on Thursday, comes less than a week before Israel’s general election and a few days before the constitutional deadline for the election of Lebanon’s new head of state.
Source: DN
