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Maritime border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel. A Laymen's attempt to understand what's going on.
#ترسيم_الحدود
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1/ It all started when a big mistake was made by a Lebanese team delegated by the Siniora government to negotiate maritime borders with Cyprus in 2007.
Line number 1 was established.
Fortunately the final agreement with Cyprus was not signed by 🇱🇧 and is not legally binding.
2/ In 2009 Michel Suleiman Transferred the file to the Lebanese Army command.
Line 23 was established under document 6433
The file was sent to the UN.
Israel didn't accept line 23 and insisted on line 1 that was negotiated between Lebanon and Cyprus.
3/ There was also technical and diplomatic errors with document 6433 most notably it was only signed by the minister of public works and lacked the signatures of other ministers.
6433 would also unwillingly recognize Israel which contradicts Lebanese official stance.
4/ In 2011 through indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, the US through Frederic Hoff proposed the "Hof" line.
The "Hof" line gave Lebanon 55% of the area between line 1 and line 23.
Neither Lebanon nor Israel accepted the "Hof" line.
5/ During the same year, the Lebanese army with the help of British specialists determined that document 6433 is not legal.
The Lebanese army and the British specialists determined that the legal right to Lebanon was line 29.
Lebanon thus had to cancel document 6433.
6/ Fast forward 2021 Israel already did the excavation and is getting ready to start exploring the Karish Gas field that is partially within Lebanon's maritime borders.
Israel will supposedly start extracting Gas from Karish within a month, by June 2021.
7/ In the meantime 6433 has yet to be amended to move the borders from line 23 to line 29 to be able to stop Israel from extracting gas from Karish.
However, time is being wasted and there is a Lebanese internal conflict about the signature.
8/ Today we heard rumors by Al Akhbar newspaper that line 29 can change and a new line called the "Qana" line will replace it.
The rumor was immediately denied by the Lebanese army and the ministry of defense.
In the meantime 6433 is yet to be amended and time is ticking!
9/ The Tekhelet island effect...
It's a 24 meters wide rock that lies 1 kilometer from the Israeli shore.
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