Will Lebanon’s leopards finally change their spots?

Since its birth as a state 100 years ago, we were told that Lebanon occupied a strategic location and was the Eastern Mediterranean’s gateway to the Arab world. Lebanon benefited from this for the first 50 years of its existence, but then its geography, religious diversity, cultural position between East and West, and Israel’s establishment on its southern border complicated matters and challenged the future of the country.

Nothing encapsulates this more than Lebanon’s recent offshore gas finds that, if realized, could turn its fate upside down — from a bankrupt state teetering on the edge of total collapse to potentially becoming a natural gas exporter. That is if its competing warlords and its regional political and strategic alignment with Iran do not spoil the golden opportunity this find represents.

But nothing is simple in Lebanon and, instead of all its communities uniting to facilitate and speed up the offshore gas exploration, the borders of its most promising maritime fields are apparently encroaching on Israel’s or themselves are being encroached on by Tel Aviv, depending on who you listen to. Israel is reportedly set to start drilling and extraction work soon. Lebanon and Israel remain technically at war and, though they agreed a few years ago to US-mediated talks to delineate their borders to boost exploration, those talks failed and now the risks of a violent conflict on the horizon are high.

The latest spark was the arrival of a vessel operated by the London-based Energean off the Mediterranean coast in early June. It is set to develop a gas field known as Karish, which Israel claims is in its exclusive economic zone, while Lebanon says the field is in contested waters and should not be developed until the two countries conclude their indirect talks to delineate the maritime borders.

Those talks fizzled out in the past, as Lebanon insisted that a boundary known as “line 23” be moved further south to “line 29,” adding about 1,400 sq km to its claim, including part of the Karish field. Hence, Lebanon pleaded for the return of US energy envoy Amos Hochstein, who on his arrival this week proposed an S-shaped boundary line instead of a straight one.

Though Beirut is suddenly keen on American mediation, this does not come without its habitual saber-rattling. Its de facto strongman Hassan Nasrallah warned in a speech last week that, if Lebanon cannot extract gas from the area, Israel will also not be able to. The head of Hezbollah said the powerful Iran-backed Shiite movement would not “stand by and do nothing in the face of (Israel’s) looting of Lebanon’s natural wealth, which is the only hope for the salvation of the Lebanese people.”

This was a welcome admission that Lebanon is on the brink economically and socially, but also it is like the pot calling the kettle black, since Nasrallah’s party and its corrupt allies are complicit in the grand Lebanese asset theft that led the World Bank to rank the country as suffering from one of the three worst economic meltdowns the world has ever witnessed.

Regarding Karish and the nearby Qana field, Lebanese president and Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun has promised to offer a reply to the American mediator. But in view of their past missed opportunities, I am not holding my breath about seeing gas flowing out of Lebanese rigs anytime soon.

There are reasons for my pessimism. Lebanon’s corrupt ruling class, which has carried out policies over the past three decades that are specifically designed to benefit its own clans, tribes and regional partners, is not likely to have a sudden awakening and reverse its stance politically and economically, clean up its act and reform the system it spent decades establishing just because it is the sensible thing to do to help the 80 percent of Lebanese who are in the grip of poverty.

Many in the country believe that the maritime dispute with Israel is a mere extension of other stalemates the country has been experiencing since Tel Aviv withdrew from the south of the country 22 years ago. These include the Shebaa farms — a strip of land bordering Syria and Israel that remained under the latter’s control and has been exploited by Hezbollah and its patrons in Iran and Syria to maintain its military arsenal, even though all other Lebanese parties have disarmed.

Listening to Lebanese talk shows over the past week, politicians — veterans and newly elected parliamentarians alike — have been vying to show how resolute they are in defending the sovereignty of the country’s gas and acting as guardians of the public wealth. They are all determined not to let Israel benefit from its deep-sea wealth, forgetting that Tel Aviv is already pumping gas from three other fields farther south of Karish and Qana, while Lebanon is yet to find any substantial deposits in its uncontested northern waters.

Some of these politicians have been going even further, dwelling on the Western countries’ rush to buy gas from any source to plug the hole left by Russia turning off some of its gas and oil taps as a response to sanctions imposed on its industry due to its invasion of Ukraine.

In theory, Lebanon’s ruling elites might find themselves — due to some geopolitical calculations — hovering over new-found wealth in the nation’s waters, but I tend to remain skeptical and believe that Hezbollah’s keenness will be checked by Iran and Syria’s calculations and wider vision for what works for the region. If they do allow Lebanon to build a terminal so that it can sell gas to Europe, is Lebanon sure the revenue from such an operation will be deposited in the country’s coffers, without it melting into the pockets of the country’s corrupt but powerful political elite? Can they be sure that this political class, which has prevented people from accessing their savings to fund its failed management of the state and its greed, has transformed into transparent and ethical operators ready to rebuild Lebanon’s economy and its people’s prosperity?

Hochstein might shuttle back and forth, proposing all types of dividing lines as a compromise, but the question remains: Can the Lebanese trust their politicians after all they have seen over the last few years and believe that they are likely to abandon caring for enriching themselves above all else, even if that means sending their people to hell? The leopards of Lebanon have never changed their spots.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.