JERUSALEM: Israel will hold rare talks with Lebanon next month in an effort to resolve a longstanding maritime border dispute, an Israeli official said Saturday.
The official said Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz will lead the Israeli delegation in talks mediated by the United States. Representatives from the three countries are likely to speak by video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic, the official said.
The official requested anonymity in line with regulations. There was no immediate comment from Lebanon.
Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and are technically in a state of war. They each claim about 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the Mediterranean Sea as within their own exclusive economic zones.
Both are hoping to explore and develop new gas fields in the Mediterranean following a number of big finds in recent years. US diplomats have been shuttling between the two countries and pushing for direct talks in recent years.
Lebanon, which is mired in a severe economic crisis, is especially keen to develop offshore energy resources.
The Trump administration is likely to celebrate any direct talks as another diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East, following recent agreements in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — Gulf countries that have never gone to war with Israel — agreed to recognize it and establish diplomatic relations.
Israel invaded Lebanon during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war to battle Palestinian militants who had launched cross-border attacks, and it occupied a strip of territory in southern Lebanon until 2000.
In 2006, Israel fought a month-long war with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group. Hezbollah has vastly expanded its arsenal of rockets and missiles since then, and today Israel views it as its most immediate military threat.
Neither side is believed to be seeking war, but they have traded fire on a number of occasions in recent years, and both have warned that a future conflict would be far more devastating for the other side.
Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the US and other countries, is part of a political alliance that dominates Lebanon’s parliament and government.
Israel to hold US-mediated talks with Lebanon on sea border
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Israel to hold US-mediated talks with Lebanon on sea border
- Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and are technically in a state of war
- Both are hoping to explore and develop new gas fields in the Mediterranean following a number of big finds in recent years
Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations
- Adani Group holds a 70 percent stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country
- US last week accused Adani Group of being part of scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure contracts, misleading US investors
HYDERABAD, India: Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue to invest in the country, Israel’s envoy to India said on Thursday, affirming the nation’s support for the ports-to-media conglomerate whose billionaire founder is facing bribery allegations in the United States.
“We wish Adani and all Indian companies continue to invest in Israel,” Ambassador Reuven Azar said in an interview with Reuters, adding that allegations by US authorities were “not something that’s problematic” from Israel’s point of view.
The Adani Group holds a 70% stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country, including to produce military drones and plans for the manufacture of commercial semiconductors.
US authorities last week accused Gautam Adani, his nephew, and Adani Green’s managing director of being part of a scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure Indian power supply contracts and misleading US investors during fund raising efforts there.
Adani Group has denied all the accusations, calling them “baseless.”
Still, shares and bonds of Adani companies were hammered last week and some partners began to review joint projects.
“I am sure Adani Group will resolve its problems,” Azar said on the sidelines of an event in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Lebanon to hold parliament session on Jan. 9 to elect president
- State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament will hold a session in January to elect a new president, official media reported on Thursday, a day after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began and following more than two years of presidential vacuum.
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.
Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns
- Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba
BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.
Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.
A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.
But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.
The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.
There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.
The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.
Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.
Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.
Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north
- Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”
Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession
- Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
