By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A land border deal between Israel and Lebanon, to be implemented in phases, could dampen the simmering and deadly conflict between the two countries, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden said on Thursday.
Attacks between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon have raised concerns of a deeper war in the Middle East. The two sides have regularly exchanged rockets and airstrikes since the war in Gaza began last October.
“I don’t expect peace, everlasting peace, between Hezbollah and Israel,” Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Biden on energy and investments, said in an interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“But if we can come to an agreement and… remove some of the impetus for conflict and establish a recognized boundary between the two for the first time ever, I think that will go a long way.”
Hochstein concluded a maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon in late 2022, after two years of negotiations, which opened the way for both countries to develop natural gas and other resources in the region. Hochstein has been working on a demarcation of the land border between the two countries, which could consist of a number of phases.
The first would be to allow people in northern communities in Israel to return to their homes and for people in southern communities in Lebanon to return to their homes, Hochstein said.
Part of that would require strengthening the Lebanese Armed Forces, including recruiting, training and equipping forces, Hochstein said, without detailing how that would be done.
The second phase would include an economic package for Lebanon, “ensuring that the international community shows the Lebanese people that we have invested in them.”
For example, Lebanon’s electricity grid only operates for a few hours a day, causing enormous damage to the economy. “We have a solution for that, we put together a package that could create a solution that would bring them up to 12 hours of electricity in a short period of time,” Hochstein said.
The final stage would be a land border agreement between Lebanon and Israel, he said.
Stabilizing Lebanon’s politics and economy could help reduce Iran’s influence there, he said.
“The ability of outside forces of any significance to influence Lebanon will decline dramatically,” Hochstein said.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
