On the 28th local time, Israel and Lebanon held the second round of maritime border negotiations under the coordination of the United States. Sources disclosed that the differences between the two sides are still very large.
Reuters reported on the 28th that after the first meeting in early October, the Israeli and Lebanese delegations once again started negotiations on the 28th at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon in Naqurah, Lebanon. According to sources, Israel and Lebanon submitted their respective proposed border demarcation maps on the same day.
However, a comparison of the two maps shows that the disputed sea area between the two parties is larger than that during the previous negotiations.
Israel and Lebanon
Another source from the Lebanese military pointed out that the map submitted by Lebanon advocates that the Lebanese maritime border extends southward than the border that the country submitted to the United Nations several years ago.
At the same time, the map proposed by Israel pushed the border to a position farther north than before.
According to Reuters news, the two sides will negotiate again on the 29th.
Both Israel and Lebanon hope to explore and develop new natural gas fields in the Mediterranean. In the past few years, they have discovered a large number of large gas fields in the Mediterranean.
As far as the Lebanese government is in a severe economic crisis, it is particularly keen on developing offshore energy. However, since the founding of Israel in 1948, Israel and Lebanon have not signed a peace agreement and failed to reach an agreement on the delimitation of the border.
This has caused the issue of sovereignty over the approximately 860 square kilometers of water on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
