Lebanese Journalist: 'There is no solution for Lebanon outside peace with Israel'

Submitted by Nora (United States), Oct 15, 2021 at 02:18

There is no solution for Lebanon outside peace with Israel

Tuesday - 12 October 2021 - Issue No. [15659]

Nadim Koteish

Lebanese journalist

One of the surrealities of the Lebanese days is that as the country prepares to sink into total darkness, a media, political and popular "criminal investigation" erupts into the suspicion of "contamination" of Egyptian and Jordanian gas particles with Israeli particles. Lebanon, "dignity, dignity and resistance," refuses to enter the era of electricity, which the Mediterranean, from the ancestors of the Lebanese, began to identify in amber stones since 600 BC, unless it was confirmed that the gas particles were purified from the mines of normalization!

Of course, the issue is very simple. Lebanon will be supplied with Egyptian gas via Syria, through the Arab Gas Pipeline, which ascends from El-Arish in Egypt, passing through Aqaba, and then heads north along Jordanian territory, towards Syria and then Lebanon.
However, this line meets in northern Jordan with the Israeli-Jordanian gas pipeline, which transports gas from the shores of Haifa to northern Jordan in the Khanasari area in Mafraq, according to an agreement signed in 2016 and began work in 2020. At this point, it is no longer possible to ascertain " Safa al-Arak gas" reaching Lebanon...

As for the Jordanian electricity promised to Lebanon, 40 percent of it is produced by employing Israeli gas; This means that Lebanon cannot guarantee a rescue solution that will rid it of darkness, which is guaranteed to be completely free of "Israeli abomination."

In any case, does Lebanon guarantee that drug laboratories in the world are free of Israeli scientists working in research and development frameworks?

Do they guarantee that their children, who study in universities around the world, will graduate and not mix their ideas with ideas produced by Israelis, who are today among the world's top leaders of ideas, such as Yuval Harari and Daniel Kahneman?

Do they guarantee that entertainment on Netflix and other platforms is free of what is Israeli?

All this militant nonsense comes from a country that is very persistent in its collapse and regression in all realistic indicators. As if it is a country dedicated to the idea of ​​resistance, not the other way around.
Why does Lebanon have to bypass the Egyptian Al-Arish through Jordan and Syria to reach the gas, which is the Mediterranean, which can immediately begin exploration for its gas adjacent to the Israeli gas...or it can reach realistic understandings with Israel to search for joint energy projects, as is the case between Egypt and Israel And Israel, Cyprus, Israel and Greece... Or, at the very least, internationally sponsored understandings for the sharing of common natural resources in accordance with the rules of international law?!

Why do we not hear in Nicosia or Athens about "Israeli ambitions" in the capabilities of those countries, at least with the intensity that we hear in Lebanon?

The strange thing is that the Lebanese government, instead of starting its first session with a serious search for a settlement of the maritime borders with Israel, began begging for gas and electricity from Egypt and Jordan, and with discussions of demarcating the borders between the molecules of Israeli gas and Arab gas within the same pipeline!

In short, the Lebanese-Israeli maritime conflict is based in the beginning on a disputed area of ​​860 square kilometres, at the base of which lies a mistake on the part of the Lebanese side in the demarcation during the demarcation of the border with Cyprus.

This space was born from Lebanon's awareness of an arithmetic error, and after Israel unilaterally determined its borders with it.
After five long rounds of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, to reach an understanding on this spot, Lebanon decided to introduce new calculation rules to define its exclusive economic zone; The huge disputed area to 2,290 km2.

In other words, the area of ​​Lebanon suddenly increased at a rate of 10 percent, which is the area of ​​1430 km2 that was added to the first disputed area!

Accordingly, the negotiations were halted, and the Hezbollah militia scored a new victory by adding the "Shebaa Marine Farms" to the "Wild Shebaa Farms." This paves the way for perpetuating the conflict with Israel, and thus perpetuating the legalization of arms.
It is the strategy of conflict first, even if the country is turned into a republic of beggary, in which the "resistance" will disrupt all possibilities of gas exploration, and Lebanon will get out of the economic reality that is taking shape in the eastern Mediterranean.

Even if Lebanon started exploration yesterday, it would need seven years to start benefiting from the gas revenues, if it had the necessary funds to invest in the infrastructure for exploration, drilling, extraction, refining, liquefaction and transportation...

On the other hand, for example, Israel rushed to start reaping the fruits of its gas, and instead of Waiting for the construction of undersea pipelines from its shores towards Europe, and investing about $7 billion to achieve this, it began pumping gas to Egypt and from there to Europe, taking advantage of changing the function of the existing infrastructure between it and Egypt.
What prevents Lebanon from being part of the transformations of the eastern Mediterranean gas. Quite simply, what prevents him is the culture of perpetuating the conflict with Israel.

Lebanon insists on ignoring that the most prominent wave of political transformation in the Middle East is the recent wave of peace led by the United Arab Emirates, joined by the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Morocco, and Sudan, and welcomed by a number of Arab capitals who did not enter the peace.

Because of the peace, Morocco obtained an important package of recognition of its sovereignty over the Sahara, by opening a number of consulates in the desert city of El-Ayoun, which is a strategic file for Morocco.

Because of the peace, a strategic financial and economic conference was held for Sudan to write off many of the outstanding debts and set an economic road map for this country, in cooperation with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and international donors, which began to restore Sudan to be one of the most promising spots in Africa, according to World Bank reports.

The Lebanese do not have reasons to continue an ideological conflict that does not have any of the ideological elements that concern the Lebanese or the Israelis. Lebanon is not occupied by Israel, but between it and it are either disputed areas or closed areas such as the Shebaa Farms, whose Syrian or Lebanese differences are disputed. Lebanon is not part of the "Jewish homeland project"... What is between it and Israel are specific technical problems for which specific technical solutions are available.
I understand that Lebanon will not sign a peace agreement with Israel, although I do not agree to avoiding the Lebanese-Israeli peace.

Rather, I consider it one of the most logical matters in all Arab relations with Israel. What a Lebanese should not understand is depriving Lebanon of its capabilities in order to perpetuate the weapons of the "Hezbollah" militia and perpetuate the reasons that allow it to assume the status of legitimacy. What should not be accepted is leaving Lebanon captive to the Hezbollah militia's narrative on the Israeli issue, and plunging the Lebanese into searching for the "sex of the beggar gas molecules", while the Lebanese gas in the sea is slowly emerging from the eastern Mediterranean gas equation.

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