As we wrote here on the eve of the signing of the maritime agreement between Israel and Lebanon, the agreement was indeed activated by sending separate letters from the two countries to the United Nations. This was Nasrallah's demand, and like his other demands in the negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, this demand was also expressed in the agreement. At the end of the negotiations, when Israel accepted the main demands of Lebanon/Nasrallah, Lebanon apparently tried, with the encouragement of Hezbollah, to get a little more from Israel, and Lebanon subsequently submitted a list of amendments to the final paper and points to which Israel had already expressed its agreement. A few hours later, this list of corrections demanded by Hezbollah appeared as a slide with a nice and professional graphic design on its TV station Al Manar, probably to make it easier for viewers in Israel to receive the message.  Prime Minister Yair Lapid's response to this paper was unequivocal and immediate, in a way that alarmed Hezbollah and Lebanon. In response to this response by Lapid, Nasrallah immediately sentenced himself to a speaking fast, and disappeared from the screens for a few days with the raised finger and the ultimatum, and at the same time he released Lebanon and the Lebanese President Aoun, to withdraw from these last demands of Lebanon, and to agree to the final paper sent by the American mediator. Also this step, of withdrawal, which in our estimation was made mainly from the experience of 2006 (cf. the main title here issue 63), in which Hezbollah crossed the limit of its power in dealing with Israel, and was defeated; Well, this step was also a successful step for Hezbollah, and its withdrawal was exactly at the right moment, and this withdrawal sealed the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon on the maritime border in the complete victory of the organization and Iran.

This is not a victory of achievements for Lebanon, it should be said right away, because Israel also achieved its naval desire in negotiations with Lebanon. But this is an achievement that does not change the picture of the war between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran: since the fundamental background to the naval agreement, and one of the main demands of Hezbollah, and behind the scenes also of Iran, was that the state of war between Lebanon and Israel would remain despite their signing of the naval agreement, this is the main picture and it is the important one, and this is the deeper context of the agreement, and this is the point regarding which the agreement must be examined; In this context, the agreement between the countries should not be examined for its achievements in the maritime field, but for its effect on the arena of war between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran, an arena that remains as it was. Therefore, the negotiations and the agreement at the end, from Israel's point of view, should have brought Hezbollah to a substantial reduction of its demands, and to a declaratory loss, and first and foremost to tattoo the demand that a state of war will continue to prevail between the countries despite the signing of such an important political agreement (which, as mentioned, Hezbollah turned into an economic commercial agreement that is not direct agreement). All these things did not happen. In this sense, therefore, the Israeli/Lebanese agreement is a victory for Hezbollah and Iran, who, in the context of the continuation of the war, have had clear achievements.

First, the naval agreement put an end to the internal Lebanese crisis into which Hezbollah entered following the explosion in the port of Beirut. The maritime agreement that was signed this week and in which Hezbollah gave Israel an ultimatum, and won, changed the attitude of a large Lebanese public towards Hezbollah, and this change is reflected in the praise that the organization receives within Lebanon for its role in achieving the agreement, and in the Lebanese achievement that is reflected in this agreement. Therefore, in the scene of the Lebanese war, Israel will find, from the moment the naval agreement is signed, a strengthened Hezbollah, which has the power to take military action once again against Israel without a large Lebanese public revolting against it, or at least with a lower probability of that. This victory of Hezbollah even allows Iran to continue pursuing its goal of placing fronts against Israel on its fences, and since internal public opinion in Lebanon is now more favorable towards Hezbollah and Iran than it was, it may even be another step for Iran to realize its wet dream of a strategic port in the Mediterranean, 5 minutes from the Israeli border. It is of course still very far, but every journey (Iranian in this case) as the Taoist proverb that has become a cliché, begins with a small step.