Beirut: Lebanese Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab said that September could be a decisive month in the indirect border demarcation negotiations between Beirut and Israel.
“Things are going in the right direction, and we should remain hopeful that this file will end soon,” Bou Saab said following his meeting with President Michel Aoun at Baabda Palace on Tuesday.
The Deputy Speaker added that an expected visit this week by US mediator Amos Hochstein would “not bring a definitive solution” to Lebanon’s maritime border dispute with Israeli authorities but that it would be “another positive step towards one”.
He added that the ongoing communications with Hochstein will “intensify” in September.
“There are many complications, but they are being solved one after the other, and for that reason, we are saying that things are on the right path.”
Lebanese authorities are trying to end a dispute with Israel over maritime borders, which has escalated after the Jewish state on June 5 sent a vessel to the Karish field, which Tel Aviv says as being within its economic zone, while Beirut claims as in the disputed waters.
Israel previously announced that it plans to extract gas from the disputed area with Lebanon as early as September, prompting the Hezbollah in Lebanon to threaten attacks if Israel proceeds without first resolving the maritime border dispute with Beirut.
Lebanon and Israel are demarcated by the Blue Line published by the UN on June 7, 2000 for the purposes of determining whether Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon.
It has been described as:”temporary” and “not a border, but a “line of withdrawal”.
–IANS