Between the two countries for more than 40 years now there are the UN peacekeeping forces. The international Unifi contingent, led by Bersaglieri General Stefano Del Col since 2018, is currently made up of soldiers of various nationalities: Italians, Ghanaians, South Koreans, Irish and Poles, alongside the Lebanese Fifth Brigade.
The meeting in question lasted approximately two and a half hours (with a 30-minute “coffee break” in which the members of the Lebanese and Israeli delegations did not participate) and was devoted to reciprocal presentations, explanations concerning the topics to be discussed and an agenda for the next dialogue meetings was also defined.

Both the Israeli and Lebanese delegations were present, of course, and there was also a US representation, led by David Schenker and one from the UN. The meeting was also attended by General Del Col who is Commander Unifil.
It can be said that, despite the particularly tense atmosphere, this is the first time that the official representatives of the two countries have met and this can already mean a lot from a diplomatic point of view.
The leader of the right-wing party of the “Lebanese Forces”, Samir Geagea, said: “We do not want normalization with Israel because we demand a solution to the Palestinian issue before anything else and nobody can get around it”.
I palestinesi a cui si riferisce Geagea sono i circa 450 mila rifugiati in Libano, in maggioranza discendenti della diaspora del 1948.
As if to say that the subject of the talks is only one: the maritime borders, i.e. the dispute over 860 Kmq of the Mediterranean Sea, which is considered to hide offshore gas fields that neither of the two contenders could exploit without an agreement, however hard to digest.
Lebanon counts a lot on that gas and on the US influence in the international financial bodies, given the tragic economic situation of the Cedars Country.
Israel and its US sponsors are instead focusing more on seeking a peace agreement with the Lebanese state (similar to those recently established with the Emirates and Bahrain), probably to come up with clauses that disarm or at least reduce the influence of the Party of God (Hezbollah), and therefore Iran, on Lebanon.

This vision seems impossible at the moment, given that the very fragile balance that still allows us to talk about a Lebanese State is based on the participation of the Shiite parties (Hezbollah and Amal) in the government of the country.
The Israeli vision described above seems increasingly impossible given the growing clash between the Jewish State and Hezbollah accused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hiding weapons in the centre of Beirut.
The President of the Beirut Parliament, the Shiite Nabih Berri, has also made it clear that this is not a matter of “normalisation” with Israel, like the one concluded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Berri said on the merits that: “I have been working on this agreement for ten years and well before the orientations of certain Arab countries”, he went on to point out: “The agreement should have been reached a year ago, but there have been delays”. A stop that stopped the new gas explorations.

However, resolving the maritime border dispute is in the immediate interest of both countries.
The seabed under the territorial waters hide gas fields and explorations are blocked in the absence of an agreement. The exploitation of hydrocarbons would be a godsend especially for Lebanon which is facing the worst economic crisis in thirty years and is bent by the terrifying explosion in the port of Beirut on 4th August.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed the “historic meeting”, which came after three years of mediation in Washington, and said that: “These talks offer a great opportunity for greater stability, security and prosperity for both nations”.
Lebanon and Israel are officially still at war.
The conflict in question began in 1948-1949 and culminated with the taking of Beirut in the summer of 1982.
The current borders are those of the 1949 armistice, after the first Arab-Israeli war.
Lebanon still claims a small portion of territory, the so-called Shebaa farms, about one square kilometre from where the Israelis did not withdraw in 2000 when they ended the occupation of the South of the country.
The talks on the maritime border, as mentioned above, will instead cover an area of 850 square kilometres.
At the moment, the American mediation is therefore proposing to grant about two thirds to Lebanon and one third to Israel.
Net of this meeting and those that will take place in the next weeks/months a very relevant fact should be highlighted.
In other words, the gas may not necessarily be there.
In fact, the actual existence of gas reserves and their commercial viability have yet to be demonstrated from a geological and technical point of view.
A first offshore exploration well in Block 4 proved to be dry at the end of April 2020.
Secondly, it should be explained that: in the event of gas being discovered, estimates have found that under the best conditions significant revenues from gas exploitation would not be available until 2030.
Therefore, a decade away.
Great doubt also concerns the possibility of finding an international company willing to invest in a country like Lebanon which, besides never having had an extractive industry, is deeply affected by corruption and dysfunctionality, the same “evils” that made possible the storage of the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate whose explosion devastated Beirut.
Although corruption in these cases may be an interesting incentive for international companies to do business in this country, just look at what they have done in Africa.

Finally, it should be noted that these energy targets are long-lasting and dynamic as the political, economic and geopolitical balances change.
What started last October 14 is probably a new chapter between the governments of the two countries. We are therefore a long way from a relaxing relationship between the two contenders but above all from a peaceful situation in that part of the world.

By Michele Brunori