The head of Lebanon's Free Patriotic Movement, Gibran Bassil, was outraged. This week he learned that interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati and interim Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib had concocted a rather ambitious plan behind his back.
In a meeting they held with UNIFIL commander Aroldo Lazaro, they expressed willingness to discuss drawing the land border with Israel. Minister Habib even justified himself by claiming that this is not normalization, God forbid. The discussion followed Hezbollah's position on Israeli territory, the existence of which was announced last month. In the meantime, one of the two tents has been evacuated, although Lebanon claims that the post remains as it was. UNIFIL sought to convey a message from Israel that the remaining tent must be evacuated, and encountered a counter-demand to first evacuate the fence in the northern village of Rajar, claiming that the position also depends on the other disputes on the border.
In total, there are 13 disputed points along the border apart from the conflict in the Har Dov area. These are mainly the village of Rajar, whose northern part is in Lebanese territory and surrounded by a fence, and seven abandoned farms. The Alma Research Center noted that the fence was erected a year ago beyond the Blue Line in order to prevent smuggling and infiltrations from Lebanon and to protect the residents. The area has been under Israeli sovereignty since 1981, when the Golan Heights Law was enacted. After the withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Beirut claimed ownership of the area, even though it was under Syrian control until the Six Days.
Basil was not convinced. "Any talk about land border negotiations is a violation of the constitution and a suspicious act," he said, adding, "We are surprised that Lebanon has informed the UN that it is ready to draw the land border along the Blue Line. This speech constitutes an outrageous constitutional violation. Negotiations are under the authority of the President of the Republic. Second, there is no such thing as drawing the land border, since it is defined and recognized internationally on the basis of the Newcomb-Pole Agreement (a treaty drafted in 1923 between France and Britain), and a Security Council resolution stating that Israel will withdraw to the international borders."
A Lebanese farmer near the village of Rajar in Lebanon, photo: Reuters
Bassil shed light on the profound failure of Lebanese politics, which creates understandable tension on all fronts. The Lebanese president's post has not been filled since last October with the departure of Michel Aoun. A month ago, parliament convened for the 12th time to elect a new president. The selection process works like this: the Majles has 128 seats, while in the first round you need 86 votes to be elected, and in the second round only 65 votes are needed. In the results of the first round, opposition candidate Jihad Azour received 59 votes, while Suleiman Frangieh, candidate of the Hezbollah camp, received only 51 votes. The remaining votes went to other candidates or a white ballot, so there was a real chance of Azour's election as president on the second ballot (he only needed six more votes). But then MPs abandoned the building, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced the cancellation of the session. The attempt failed.
Basil. Speak out against the negotiations, photo: Abd Rabbo Ammar/ABACA
Lebanon is trapped in a plotter. The Hezbollah camp lost its majority in the last elections, but even the opposition is unable to get enough lawmakers to form a government and elect a president against Nasrallah's nose and wrath. Therefore, the office of president remains empty and no one will make national decisions such as starting indirect negotiations with Israel. Last year, President Aoun was the driving force behind the maritime border agreement. It was he who met with American envoy Amos Hochstein (who arrived this week for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), he was the one who provided a platform of apologetics for the indirect talks with Israel, and he was the one who ultimately signed the memorandum of understanding, which recognized the common maritime border and enabled the Karish gas platform to operate without fear of provocations and drones.
Galant addressed the security incident on the Lebanese border // Photo: Lilach Shoval
Who is the Lebanese leader who will now take responsibility for the tension on the border with Israel? There doesn't seem to be one. The vacuum does not prevail only in the presidential palace and in the government, but is spreading to the economic and security spheres. At the end of July, Lebanese Bank Governor Riad Salameh will leave office after three decades. He will leave behind financial ruin and suspicions of worldwide corruption, for which an arrest warrant was issued against him. Subsequently, army commander Joseph Aoun will also leave office in a few months, and Chief of Staff Amin al-Aram has already retired.
Hochstein arrives again
Beyond the leadership void, Basil's opposition to land border negotiations, echoed by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in his speech on Wednesday night, hinted at an internal Lebanese dispute. Tension between those who want to obtain an Israeli concession through indirect negotiations and those who want to ride on it and take credit for it in the future. Nasrallah said that the tents were intended to lead to a retreat in the northern village of Rajar, and claimed that only after they were erected did the mediators take action. Is it?
Both sides have identified an opportunity in the crisis in Israel, but both sides – Hezbollah and the interim government – are careful to send hints that they are not interested in escalation. Al-Akhbar, a newspaper close to the terrorist organization, noted that "escalation has several options," and a senior Lebanese official involved in negotiations over the maritime border stressed that there was no sign of escalation. At the same time, Lebanese sources reported that Amos Hochstein's mission to Israel was intended to examine positions regarding the drawing of the land border and that he might even visit Lebanon.
The inertia of the developments is very reminiscent of the conduct in the time before the negotiations to draw the maritime border. Provocation and another provocation, meeting after meeting of the international mediators, which pave the way for indirect negotiations. It is true that despite the significant economic achievement in the previous government's gas agreement, the Lebanese have learned a great deal about the brittle nature of Israeli positions. If Jerusalem insisted for years on a certain drawing of the maritime border, and then completely capitulated and accepted Beirut's position, why shouldn't the same be repeated on the issue of the land border? At the same time, despite the harsh criticism leveled at the time by the right-wing opposition, it is reasonable to assume that a government headed by Netanyahu would have succumbed to the heavy pressure exerted at the time by the United States, partly due to global interests in the gas market. Therefore, it is possible that the coming months will be a test of how the Americans can withstand pressure on the land front.
American realtor Hochstein. Again on the lines, photo: AP
Despite this, it seems that Hezbollah, the interim government in Lebanon and the United States are less considerate of the lack of competent bodies in Beirut that can reach understandings. Israel should be concerned about this, because in the absence of a political address in Beirut, the risk of unwanted escalation increases. As in the Second Lebanon War, which marked 17 on Wednesday, Nasrallah does not always score his assessments of the Israeli response. The past teaches us that one mistake is enough for a war to break out. The disturbing incident at the border that day was an example of the level of volatility. Several Hezbollah operatives tried to sabotage the barrier near the fence, and the IDF detonated a stun device to drive them away. The squad members were wounded, but one of them was killed enough - and we were probably in a completely different incident. In this sense, the army acted judiciously in activating the stun bomb.
As of now, Israel is careful to emphasize that it has no interest in escalation. The army clarified this after the incident at the border, and during the week a "security assessment" was leaked according to which Nasrallah was not aware of the tent affair. As if it were a Lebanese version of "Givat Halfon does not answer." It seems that there are those who decided to lay a ladder that would allow the terrorist organization to climb down from the tree it climbed over the blue line. The trouble is that Nasrallah burned the ladder in his speech and threatened that if the remaining tent was attacked, his people would already know how to act. His dangerous game could end in an explosion.
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