UN Will Help Set Israel-Lebanon Sea Borders

In an effort to resolve Lebanon's dispute with Israel over the recently discovered gas fields, the UN has decided that it is going to help determine the maritime borders of Israel and Lebanon

Less than a week after a United Nations spokesman said the international body would stay out of the issue of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon, the U.N. has reversed itself.

U.N. Special coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams told reporters Monday in Beirut the country was entitled to benefit from its natural energy resources. He added that the U.N. would help the country mark its maritime border with Israel as a means of ensuring that Israel did not prevent Lebanon from developing its natural reserves.


The comment followed on the heels of a statement by U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky last week who said the demarcation of maritime boundaries between Israel and Lebanon falls outside the United Nations' purview.

“We are talking about two different things: coastal waters and a disputed boundary,” the spokesman said on Wednesday. He pointed to the mandate of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) under Resolution 1701 as a guideline for the decision.

That last paragraph strikes me as odd.

First of all, this is not an issue of 2 different things: coastal waters and a disputed boundary--it is the one issue of the disputed boundary in coastal waters. If maritime issues are somehow out of the purview of the UN, then that is that.

Secondly, to point to the UNIFIL implementation of UN Resolution 1701 as a guideline for deciding that it would actually be a good thing to get the UN involved--is ludicrous. Resolution 1701 was supposed to insure that Hezbollah would not rearm, a job at which the UN has failed miserably.

According to the Daily Star, Williams did not definitively say that the UN would get involved:

“There may be a role for the U.N. and we have to discuss it with the U.N.’s lawyers in New York,” Williams told reporters. “But I think it is important that this issue move forward.”

We'll have to wait and see how this develops.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.