Peter Germanos


The Lebanon–Israel maritime demarcation agreement did not formally repeal Lebanon’s 1955 boycott law. No parliamentary statute was adopted to abolish it. No explicit article declared it void. Yet, in legal substance, the agreement made the law caduc, hollow, and selectively irrelevant. It did so not by words, but by practice.

 

Article 1 of Law No. 1/1955 prohibits any natural or legal person from concluding, directly or “through mediation,” any agreement with bodies or persons residing in Israel or for their benefit, whenever the subject concerns commercial, financial, or any other transaction. Its language is extraordinarily broad: it covers direct and indirect dealings, commercial deals, financial transactions, and arrangements made through intermediaries. 

 

The 2022 maritime agreement entered precisely into that prohibited zone. Lebanon accepted, through United States mediation, a permanent maritime arrangement with Israel concerning offshore resources, exploration rights, energy companies, expected revenues, and the Qana prospect. The legal fiction was that Lebanon did not “deal directly” with Israel. But Article 1 of the 1955 law already anticipated this trick: it prohibits agreements made “through mediation.” Therefore, the American channel does not erase the Israeli legal interest; it merely disguises it.

 

The Qana mechanism is the decisive point. TotalEnergies publicly stated that, with ENI, it signed a Framework Agreement with the State of Israel to implement the Lebanon–Israel maritime boundary agreement. TotalEnergies also stated that the Qana prospect might extend from Lebanese Block 9 into Israeli waters south of the newly established maritime line. ([TotalEnergies.com][2]) In other words, the arrangement did not only draw a line at sea; it created an economic formula by which Israel’s interest in Qana would be compensated through the operator. That is a commercial-financial structure for the benefit of Israel, even if the money does not pass through the Lebanese Treasury.

 

This is why the boycott law has been repealed by practice. It still exists on paper, but the state itself has acted against its core command. A state cannot criminalize indirect transactions with Israel for citizens while itself accepting an indirect maritime-financial transaction with Israel when gas, royalties, or international approval are at stake. The contradiction is not technical; it is constitutional. Either the 1955 law governs all Lebanese persons, including the state and state-authorized operators, or it has become a political weapon used selectively against individuals.

 

International law reinforces this conclusion. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states, in Article 26, that treaties in force are binding and must be performed in good faith; Article 27 adds that a party may not invoke internal law as justification for failing to perform a treaty. ([United Nations Legal Affairs][3]) Thus, once Lebanon accepted the maritime arrangement as an international commitment, it could not turn around and invoke the 1955 boycott law to destroy the very economic mechanism it had accepted.

 

Lebanese law reaches the same result. Article 2 of the Lebanese Code of Civil Procedure is commonly understood to give ratified international treaties precedence over ordinary domestic laws in case of conflict. The Lebanese legal order therefore recognizes hierarchy: an international commitment, once validly incorporated, prevails in application over a prior ordinary statute. ([United Nations Digital Library System][4]) The correct technical expression is not necessarily formal repeal, but implied derogation: the earlier law remains printed in the statute book, yet it cannot be applied against the later, more specific international arrangement.

 

The 1955 law was built on absolute economic separation. The maritime agreement built a limited economic coexistence at sea. These two logics cannot fully coexist. One says: no agreement, even through mediation, if it benefits Israel. The other says: an indirect framework may allocate offshore rights, permit exploration, and compensate Israel’s economic interest in Qana. The second practice devours the first rule.

 

The scandal is therefore not the demarcation itself. States may delimit maritime boundaries even with enemies. The scandal is legal hypocrisy: treason for citizens, pragmatism for rulers; prison for individuals, royalties for the system; boycott in speeches, economic coordination in practice.

 

The maritime agreement did not abolish the 1955 boycott law by name. It did something more devastating: it proved that the law is no longer a principle. It is a discretionary instrument of power. Once Lebanon accepted the Qana royalty mechanism, the boycott law ceased to be a coherent legal rule and became a political slogan enforced only when convenient.


المصدر : Transparency News