Some 850 people, including 107 children, have been killed and another 2,100 have been wounded as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon continues to escalate with no end in site, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has publicly disavowed the idea of peace talks with the Lebanese government.
Sa’ar insisted that the Lebanese government needs to immediate move against the Hezbollah movement itself to prevent Hezbollah from in any way retaliating against the ongoing Israeli invasion if they want the proposed talks to be considered.
Energy Minister Eli Cohen downplayed the chances of any negotiated settlement with Hezbollah, and used the war as an opportunity to rail against the extent maritime border between Israel and Lebanon, suggesting it was an “illegitimate agreement” and Israel could cancel it outright and seize more maritime assets.
Israel FM Gideon Sa’ar (image under Creative Commons license)
The maritime border was long disputed because of valuable natural gas fields along the boundary, and the deal was reached in 2022 to allow the exploitation of those fields in a mutually agreed upon manner. Israel’s current far-right coalition was opposed to that deal, arguing that it gave Lebanon too many rights over its own maritime territory.
Though the maritime dispute has nothing to do with the ongoing Israeli invasion of Lebanon, it seems to be a maximalist position for hawks within the government to use this as a pretext to seize new economic assets on the course of the conflict.
But of course, renegotiating the maritime boundary would require negotiating at all, and right now, that seems to be a bridge to far for Israeli officials, who are content to just continue to escalate the conflict with no specific vision for how or even if the war might eventually end.
