A senior official in the Energy Ministry expresses cautious optimism about the maritime border talks with Lebanon that are set to start tomorrow morning.
“If the other side comes to the talks with an pragmatic approach, I hope that we can solve the dispute and move forward within a short period of time — weeks, months,” the senior official tells diplomatic reporters in a briefing, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Of course, if the other sides comes with the intention to reach another victory over the ‘Zionist enemy,’ then they can continue to celebrate victories like they did for the last 10 years,” he adds ironically, adding that the current Israeli-Lebanese argument about the exact delineation of the maritime borders has been going on for a decade.
The official stresses that the talks, starting tomorrow at 10 a.m. in a tent on a United Nations base north of the border, are not to be mistaken as the beginning of a normalization process similar to those with the UAE or Bahrain. Rather, they are focused exclusively on settling the maritime border dispute to enable both countries to start looking for natural gas on their side of the border.
— Raphael Ahren
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From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
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