Fact Checking the Arab Media

When President Biden appointed his personal friend and former Obama administration energy coordinator Amos Hochstein as his own energy envoy last summer, it seemed that the decades-old deadlock between Lebanon and Israel over their sea boundary, and potentially tens of billions of dollars in energy resources, might finally be resolved.

Hochstein was assumed to be trusted by the Israelis (he was born in Israel and served in the IDF in the early 1990s). He was perceived positively by some of the main Lebanese actors as a foe of a former U.S. envoy, Ambassador Frederic Hof, who had tabled a deal ten years before known as the “Hof Line” boundary that was widely seen in Lebanon as exceptionally unfair. And he came with a deep background in the complexities of the energy sector.

Perhaps most importantly, however, the Biden administration seemed hungry to claim a success in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although a mutually agreed-upon sea boundary between Lebanon and Israel would fall far short of any Abraham Accord-type arrangement, such a deal would represent a UN-recognized boundary between a democratically elected Arab government and Israel. Given the extensive power of the armed Lebanese political party Hezbollah, which Israel considers its most formidable non-state enemy, the removal of a large offshore area from the regular military exchanges between the two sides onshore would also help to structurally diminish the prospects of another devastating war in the Middle East, something the Biden administration very much wants to avoid.

In the run up to the May 15 Lebanese parliamentary elections earlier this month, which surprisingly ending up in more than a dozen “civil society MPs” beating establishment figures, a wide range of self-proclaimed opposition candidates had already staked out an aggressive position on the indirect Israeli-Lebanese negotiations that Hochstein was conducting: Mainly that Lebanon should immediately officialize its “maximalist” claim, known as Line 29, at the UN instead of sticking to the current Lebanese position which is Line 23.

Although it is the source of much political intrigue and enmity in Beirut, Lebanon had opened the indirect talks in the Fall of 2020 under the aegis of the Trump administration on the basis of a new, extended boundary claim known as “Line 29” but without officializing it as countries are legally entitled to do given relevant changes in international legal rulings. As a result, and probably for the first time in modern maritime negotiations, the Lebanese team continues to sit at the US-led negotiation table with a well-grounded “maximalist” position (Line 29) but without having actually deposited it de jure at the United Nations.

Interestingly, Lebanon’s restraint in not officializing its new “maximalist” Line 29 has given Lebanese establishment politicians a convenient way to accept a deal far less than what their own experts and lawyers have been saying for years should be granted to Beirut. After all, anything roughly comparable to Lebanon’s current “minimalist” Line 23 could technically be spun as a victory should Israel, for its own reasons or under US pressure, agree to Line 23.

This wiggle room has come in for a torrent of criticism from anti-establishment parties and “civil society MPs” lately as news broke about the imminent arrival of an Israeli-commissioned drilling rig to the disputed area between Line 23 and 29. One such voice, newly elected MP Halimé El Kaakour, took to Twitter on May 25 declaring, “Today we celebrate Liberation Day, and then within a few days the oil and gas production ship will reach the Karish field, which extends more than halfway into our Lebanese waters, so that the Israeli occupation begins to steal our natural resources, while the decision to amend Decree 6433 and adopt Line 29 is still hijacked without being presented to the Council of Ministers. Line 29 is our maritime border, according to all scientific and legal studies. Adoption of the decree is a duty to prevent its violation, to preserve Lebanon's rights in the Karish field, and to immediately disrupt the theft of gas from under our waters. This confrontation is ours.”

Badran’s vociferous criticism of the “civil society MPs” - charging that they hold the same position as Hezbollah, a party which nearly all of the elected Change MPs have variously criticized and all of whom ran against Hezbollah and its allies - is not surprising. On the same day as he Tweeted his condemnation of Kaakour, he published an article that argued the limited wins by anti-establishment candidates in the may 15 elections was all just “Kabuki Theatre.” What results like this reveal, Badran argued, “is that the terms ‘civil society’ or ‘independent’ are by no means synonymous with ‘anti-Hezbollah.’ If anything, most of the MP’s under these categories have either a supportive or somewhat qualified position on Hezbollah’s ‘resistance,’ to say nothing about the maritime dispute with Israel.”

All of which may very well be true - we will leave these points for another fact check. But when it comes to the maritime dispute specifically, Badran and others who are criticizing “civil society MPs” and figures are flat wrong.

Fact Check Assessment: False

MP Kaakour’s call for Lebanon adopting Line 29 is diametrically opposed to the official position of Hezbollah, as specifically voiced a number of times of the past several months by its leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah. Indeed the Hezbollah chief has made it quite clear since at least October of 2021 that it supports the government’s official negotiating position, which remains the “minimalist” Line 23. “We have declared on more than one occasion that we do not want to interfere in this matter,” explained Nasrallah via a televised address. “This is left to the state, and the state should take a stand and make up its mind.” In fact, a review of Nasrallah’s speeches, available in English here, finds no endorsement of Line 23 and constant reiteration of the original point he made publicly first in October 2021: When it comes to what should be considered sovereign Lebanese maritime territory, Hezbollah backs the government position, which was and remains Line 23 and not the “maximilaist” Line 29 overtly supported by Kaakour and a number of other anti-establishment sides. Moreover, Hezbollah has repeatedly made known what its real “redline” is when it comes to any deal between Israel and Lebanon - and it isn’t a matter of Line 29. In mid February, a few weeks after Hochstein delivered a “field sharing” proposal to Lebanon which would have seen Israel and Lebanon (both technically at war with one another) essentially go into business and share a prominent gas field, Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad announced: “They tell us that we can drill in the water, but it may turn out that you will need to share the gas field with the Israelis…We'd rather leave the gas buried underwater until the day comes when we can prevent the Israelis from touching a single drop of our waters.” Accordingly, Badran’s assertion of fact that Kaakour and those like her hold a position “indistinguishable” from Hezbollah is simply false.