In addition to the Israeli voices opposing the maritime border demarcation agreement with Lebanon, the former US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, in an exclusive interview with the newspaper “Israel Hayom”, strongly criticized the agreement, considering that what happened conveys an image to the world that Tel Aviv is subject to blackmail and is ready to compromise. To establish security on its borders.
Give up rights!
In the interview, Friedman says that Israel has made concessions that contradict the US proposals of the Trump administration. What happened recently was Hezbollah’s blackmail against Israel, as the party pressured Lebanon to demand the entirety of the disputed area. He addressed the Israeli government, addressing it by saying, “Do you want to be seen as overpaying and giving added value to a terrorist group to protect yourselves in exchange for giving up your sovereign rights? What happened makes a very strong case that this behavior sends a very dangerous message.”
“We agreed under the Trump administration with Israel that the demarcation of the border would be a very fair settlement for the Jewish state, in which Lebanon would be given 60 percent of the disputed land, and Israel would get 40 percent. Israel was ready to do that, and we thought that was the Very fair. I believe that the new Israeli concessions that resulted in handing over the entire region to Lebanon were due to pressure from the Biden administration.”
appease Hezbollah
Speaking of Hezbollah’s role in the deal, Friedman continued, “During the negotiations that took place at the time, we concluded that the 60 for 40 proposal would have been well received by the Lebanese government but was not accepted by Hezbollah’s proxies, which is why the deal was not implemented during the Trump era. For me It seems that Hezbollah is in a very good position inside Lebanon to be credited with reaching the stage of the best economy, and the best deal. And if the whole idea here is to show that Lebanon has its own identity independent of Hezbollah, then what happened proves the exact opposite, it proves that Hezbollah God was a great negotiating party and he was the party that succeeded in obtaining the added privileges that we did not accept two years ago.”
He continued, “The deal may be good for Israel if its strategy revolves around placating Hezbollah to make sure that it starts extracting gas from the Karish field, and these are not illogical calculations, and it seems to me that this is what they did: they overpaid in the Qana field so that they could get Some protection in Karish.But these calculations reveal, to a certain extent, a weakness that gnaws at Israel and pushes it to make these kinds of concessions to avoid Hezbollah attacks.It may or may not work, I’m not going to evaluate this decision, but people need to understand the message from this. The decision and its consequences. In short, what happened tells the world that Israel is ready to pay excessive amounts for protection.”
American guarantees
Friedman warned that US guarantees to Israel to ensure Lebanon’s compliance with the agreement may be problematic. He justified this by saying, “As an American citizen, I could not really understand the idea of American guarantees to Israel. There are simply no guarantees. To explain to us what exactly America will do? Suppose, God forbid, that the Lebanese decided to withdraw from this deal, so what would America do then? Look at The letter George W. Bush wrote to Ariel Sharon in 2005, look at the Budapest Memorandum, they are just agreements on paper that can be repudiated.”
And he added, “What is the American commitment if Lebanon decides in the future to leave this agreement, what will America do? Will it defend Israel if Lebanon attacks Karish? History tells us that guarantees do not mean much, and most importantly, why is Israel looking for American guarantees for such things? The goal of the Israeli National Security Strategy is to make Israel able to defend itself by itself, and never seek to make America fight its battles Well, Israel made a deal with a foreign country, and the United States pledged to provide guarantees, but what if America did not honor its commitments What will happen? Israel will begin to make demands on the United States, and the latter may accept or refuse to respond to them, and thus the tensions between two allies begin.”