8 | OCTOBER 20 • 2022 

PURELY COMMENTARY

opinion
Creative Diplomacy Yields Wins for 
Lebanon and Bigger Wins for Israel
C

reativity is underrated 
in diplomacy. But 
when deployed 
effectively, it can turn a hopeless 
stalemate into an unexpected 
opportunity. The key is that 
all parties must 
embrace what it 
offers. 
Through 
more than a 
decade of U.S.-
brokered attempts 
to resolve the 
Israel-Lebanon 
maritime boundary dispute, 
little had changed, and nothing 
had moved. It was an essentially 
zero-sum negotiation over 
how much of a sliver of the 
Mediterranean Sea would be 
included in each country’s 
Exclusive Economic Zone. 
There were potential gas 
deposits in the area, which 
made each side press for the 
maximum share it could get. 
But no deal was ever reached, 
denying both sides certainty, 
and Lebanon any ability to 
develop its gas resources, even 
as its economy plummeted and 
all of its Eastern Mediterranean 
neighbors produced gas at will. 
President Joe Biden’s special 
envoy, Amos Hochstein, 
a veteran of some of the 
frustrating earlier rounds, came 
with a different approach. 
Armed with unique knowledge 
of energy production protocols 
in other regions, he suggested 
each side focus not on what 
they were giving up, but on 
what they most needed. 
Lebanon needed a chance 
to drill for gas in its waters. 
Considering the economic, 
energy and humanitarian crisis 

Lebanon is facing, failure was 
not an option. No international 
gas producers would drill in 
waters subject to dispute and 
potential conflict. So a deal 
was imperative, one in which 
Lebanese leaders could also 
claim to their public that they 
had not relinquished Lebanese 
territory and energy resources. 
What Israeli leaders decided 
they needed was the certainty of 
quiet in the Mediterranean, and 
protection of its economic and 
security interests. Quiet comes 
from Lebanon’s own incentive 
to ensure there is no conflict, so 
its gas (assuming commercially 
viable deposits are found) in 
the Qana field that straddles the 
border can flow, while Israeli 
gas can flow unmolested in the 
adjacent Karish field, which is 
nearly ready for production. 
In addition to heading off a 
potential conflict in the north, 
the agreement ensures Israel 
will receive its proportionate 
share of royalties from the 
shared Qana field, protecting its 
economic interests. 
In fact, there is a strong 
argument that not only did 
Israel protect its interests, but, 
by ensuring Lebanon has its 
own gas resources, it advances 
them in two key ways. 
The best articulation I have 
heard of this idea came from 
Israel’s former National Security 
Adviser Yaakov Amidror. In 
an interview on Radio 103 FM 
in August, recounted by Ben 
Caspit in Maariv, he said that 
Israel has no interest in having 
a humanitarian crisis on its 
northern border. He might have 
gone further and reminded his 
listeners what happened the last 

time there was a total collapse 
of the Lebanese state: a 15-year 
civil war that killed tens of 
thousands, destroyed millions of 
lives and, among other disasters, 
resulted in the rise of Hezbollah. 
Second, he said Israel has 
a strong interest in Lebanon 
having its own gas rigs so that 
Lebanon will be motivated to 
maintain quiet at sea because it 
will have something to lose. If 
Hezbollah ever attacked Israel’s 
rigs, he said, it is perfectly clear 
what the response would be. 
That means enhanced Israeli 
deterrence. 
Amidror found the mutual 
interests argument far more 
compelling than the question 
of the angle at which a line 
is drawn from the coast to 
determine Exclusive Economic 
Zones. (There is more than one 
legitimate way to draw the line.) 
He judged the government 
capable of balancing these 
questions, understood that 

in a negotiation no side gets 
everything and rejected claims 
of a blow to Israeli sovereignty. 
The sliver of sea that Israel 
no longer claims, he pointed 
out, is not holy land. It is not 
even land. So the requirements 
for approval of territorial 
withdrawals do not apply. 
In addition to its economic 
and security gains, under the 
agreement, Israel achieves 
something it never has before: 
effective Lebanese recognition 
of the security border Israel 
asserts in the first 5 kilometers 
from the shore with the buoy 
line in its territorial waters. 
Lebanon will deny this, but 
it is very clear that this line is 
now accepted as the status quo 
and will be treated as Israel’s 
legitimate maritime border by 
the international community. 
Hezbollah leader Hassan 
Nasrallah was relatively 
restrained in his remarks on 
the deal. But, in time, he will 

continued on page 10

In this photo released by Lebanese government, Lebanese President 
Michel Aoun, right, meets with U.S. Envoy for Energy Affairs Amos 
Hochstein, center, and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea, 
left, at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Feb. 
9, 2022.

Daniel B. 
Shapiro

DALATI NOHRA/LEBANESE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT VIA AP

