In 1983 American radio personality Gary Byrd released The Crown. This is now regarded as a rap record, but the genre barely existed then, so at the time it was more an oddity than anything.
The Crown tells the story of human socio-political development, and the specifically the African role in it, and the omission of this from the history books. Not surprisingly, given the scope of its subject, it is over ten minutes long, so radio stations were reluctant to play the whole thing.
But nevertheless it gained an audience precisely due to its dense subject matter, which no one else was addressing in pop records at the time. It peaked at number 6 in the UK, where it was released by a major label, and also gained significant audiences in a number of other countries, English speaking or not.
I am therefore hoping that NEO will be recognised as a major outlet, so I can gain a similar audience for this article. If someone had come to me suggesting they write it, I would tell them not to touch the subject with a barge pole.
It is so vast, and so involved, it would take a lot more than ten minutes to explain it – you would have to produce something more like the length of War and Peace, and engage in the same type of arguments used in Principia Mathematica to deduce, after 379 pages, that 1+1 equals 2. But so many people have been stupid enough to try that the public believes it can be done, so in the spirit of self-sacrifice, here is my contribution.
We’re Here and We’re Staying
There are a number of frozen conflicts in the world. One has just been reignited in the Middle East, as if that region didn’t already have enough, precisely because there are so many that no one party can gain the upper hand.
The Lebanon-Israel Maritime Dispute still has this cumbersome name because it keeps being put on the back burner. Now it is centre stage again, and both parties are to blame, but neither wishes to admit it. So it is attracting a lot of moths, eager to bask in its glow, thinking they can shine brighter than the others and not be burnt up by it at the end of the day.
There are a number of territorial disputes in the world, and a large number of these involve sea areas, because it is a bit difficult to draw borders in the sea and erect permanent border posts. The Caspian Sea either does or doesn’t have borders in it, depending on who finds what on its sea bed, and the South China Sea, so long a playground for all the great powers of today, is demarcated by similar conflicts rather than areas of sovereignty.
The Lebanon-Israeli conflict is about many things, but in purely technical terms, it derives from a disagreement over the extent of the Lebanese maritime zone. The traditional interpretation, generally accepted by both countries with varying degrees of alacrity, is that the Lebanese zone extends to something called “Line 23”.
However Lebanon also claims, some of the time, how its zone extends further south, to Line 29. Consequently it has rejected previous demarcations, partly on the grounds that they are infringements upon Lebanese sovereignty, partly because Lebanon wants to have it all ways, with one position for a domestic audience, comprised of many distinct groups each claiming to be more Lebanese than any other, and one for an international audience which wants to use Lebanon’s social system against it, oblivious to their own divisions and lack of respect for them.
Israel has sat and watched Lebanon tie itself in knots over this issue. There have been various talks, but these have been stymied by Israel demanding that the realities of its own successful hydrocarbon explorations be acknowledged, and Lebanon not being able to argue its own case, even though Israel and the rest of the world do acknowledge that it has one.
Now Israel has called Lebanon’s bluff by plonking a floating gas installation on top of the successful Karish field, half of which is between lines 23 and 29. This is a violation of Lebanese territorial rights, or something like that, and has been done in flagrant disregard of various attempts to mediate the dispute, which imply that both sides refrain from forcing a de facto position upon the other.
But what Israel has done is merely to try and introduce reality to the situation. Lebanon hasn’t yet discovered significant gas reserves in its acknowledged maritime zone, Israel has.
So Lebanon is talking about technical claims and possible benefits, whilst Israel is talking about real ones, with real consequences. By putting the gas facility where it is, Israel is making Lebanon deal with how things are, not how they should be, and this changes the focus of the debate to who will get the most out of the sea, not why this or that party should have it.
Sign Language
It is easy to say that Lebanese prevarication or intransigent prevarication if such a thing can exist, has led us to a situation where Israel can walk in and do what it likes. It is also easy to say that the Lebanese political system was bound to produce this result, with each community more eager to change the internal power dynamics than do anything to withstand aggressive moves by their neighbours.
But what else do you expect Lebanon to do? Like the rest of the Arab world, it doesn’t think Israel should be there in the first place. Nor can it condone Israeli interference in its affairs, from bribing to bombing, even if that means allowing other countries, such as Iran, to exercise disproportionate influence of their own to help liberate the country.
Lebanon is already allowing as much reality as it wants by sitting at the same table as Israel. This is a large part of what the internal dispute over the lines is about.
The Line 23 boundary shows Lebanon to be a civilised state which plays by the rules of decency, and implies Israel is not. The Line 29 claim implies the same thing, but puts more emphasis on punishing Israel for being worse than showing that Lebanon is better, on the grounds that the latter can be treated as a given, there is no further point to make.
This dispute is being played out against a backdrop of Hezbollah being a significant political force because it is the most anti-Israeli one. Its common broader cause with the Shiite community which predominates in the Israeli border area is incidental.
Hezbollah represents even the communities furthest away, ideologically and culturally, from its own when it talks about defending Lebanese sovereignty against the Jewish state. Even when what that means, and how it is to be achieved, mean very different things to a Hezbollah member than they do to others who tolerate their presence in the mainstream political scene, even those previously defended by Israel see their point, if they want their own communities to make progress in the present day.
Israel is past caring what people think of it, and particularly what Lebanon thinks of it, when it can do real things in the real world and have a sophisticated international lobby, unavailable to most countries, screaming that any criticism of any act of the Jewish state is tantamount to the reopening of Bergen-Belsen. It also knows that the rest of the world wants to see Lebanon as inherently backward, weak and foolish, to avoid examining the true nature of its own, different systems.
Israel is exploiting gas fields because it adept at exploiting situations. Lebanon prefers to find balances, and left alone, it does. The current dispute is about how far the rest of the world wants to follow which direction, and why.
Sunny Side Down
The dispute over the maritime border is further complicated by the fact that there is only one honest broker acceptable to both sides. However it is neither honest not a broker, and therefore adds yet more layers to the responses both sides are willing to give, for whichever audience is uppermost at a given time.
Both Lebanon and Israel are Western in orientation, despite the increasing Islamist influence in Beirut. This has put both of them in the impossible position of having to turn to the US as the mediator in their dispute, Uncle Sam being the Big Daddy of everything which happens in the political West.
We are therefore being asked to believe that a State Department envoy called Amos Hochstein is interested in finding a mutually acceptable solution to this problem. This is about as credible as Accrington Stanley Football Club asking Bob Lord, Chair of local rivals Burnley, for assistance with its financial problems in 1962, and then being surprised when he recommended closing the club down and took active steps to ensure it would be wiped off the map, like it or not.
Can anyone seriously believe that the US and Israel are not joined at the hip? No US envoy for anything would dare act against Israel, or even publicly criticise its position on anything, for fear of offending very powerful forces back home, and not of the elected kind .
Israel would never want another mediator. Lebanon has no choice. If it asked a European country, even if one wanted the job, the debate would be about colonialism and historic grievances, and how the EU is better for the Middle East than the US. If it went outside the Western bloc, this would be seen as stoking a much broader conflict, and if it asked its neighbours, any mediator would want half of Lebanon and a change of government as its fee for taking part.
US mediation in a situation in which Israel can already do what it wants is the worst option, but the only one realistically available to one side in the dispute. How therefore can it be considered “mediation”? Where is this median the mediator should occupy, and how far does either side have to go to reach it?
Lebanon’s only hope in such circumstances is that the US is so far up Israel’s backside that they can do some sort of dirty deal of their own between them, which makes the border and gas issues unimportant. But it can’t admit that, so it is again reduced to careful and ever-changing posturing, depending on how much it is prepared to accept either Israeli or US influence.
Much is written about the Lebanese political class and their willingness to sell out their country and people for self-preservation, as if that doesn’t happen elsewhere without comment. But the main strength of Lebanon at present is that its politicians want to stay in power.
Everyone has too much to lose to provoke a situation in which some of them are excluded and replaced by outsiders who might do better. Lebanon may not have a common position on anything, but the never-ending political quagmire is its best hope of preserving sovereignty, which is the aim of every Lebanese politician, regardless of what that sovereignty looks like.
Agreeing to Differ About Differing
The Russia-Ukraine conflict and its associated sanctions, both economic and political, have the potential to provide a windfall to a US ally which can exploit hydrocarbon reserves. If Israel or any other acceptable state can corner the energy market the West could replace Russian gas supplies with ones it is happier with, and continue excluding other nations who may have greater capacity to generate reliable provision.
If Israel’s new gas platform does its job, the Arab world will not be able to function without Israel. It will not be able to continue its opposition to the Jewish State imposed in its midst without the energy to power its own armies and industries – and therefore its identity and credibility – and getting it from Israel.
Lebanon knows all about not being able to do anything without the say-so of its neighbours and their larger sponsors. Much of its politics is about opposing the influence of this or that foreign power, which is very real and practical, with towns and cities depending on it, rather than providing a better alternative.
So perhaps Lebanon is the best country Israel could be having this dispute with – it knows this territory, it will have a very well-thought out and sophisticated response if all the politicians want to preserve themselves. Ultimately, both sides can achieve their political goals if Israel gets is gas exports, Lebanon gets its recognised maritime border and both sides agree to respect those facts, whilst not altering whatever status quo exists at the point of agreement. But there are so many players involved, and so many positions which must inevitably shift with each shift by the other parties involved…
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
