Lebanon – a Country of Non-existent Borders
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Abstract
The Lebanese Republic is a state with undelimited and undemarcated borders. This applies to its land and maritime boundaries with Syria and Israel, as well as to the delimitation of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) with Syria and the Republic of Cyprus. The only exception is the technical delineation of the boundary between the Lebanese and Israeli EEZs.
The causes of this situation are complex and fall into three interrelated groups. (1) The political-institutional factors include the permanent tension in relations with both immediate neighbors, the multiconfessional structure of Lebanese society, the weakness of the central government, and the significant influence of external and non-state actors. (2) The economic-security dimension is reflected in the thriving large-scale and multifaceted cross-border smuggling, which serves as one of the main sources of domestic market supply and financial inflow, as well as an object of multilevel political patronage. (3) The international-legal factors concern the asymmetry of treaty obligations, the lack of effective mechanisms for implementing UN resolutions, and the differing interpretations of the notion of “border” by the interested parties.
New opportunities for border negotiations emerged as a result of a series of interconnected developments in the Levantine subregion during 2024–2025 – namely, the decisive defeat of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in its war with Israel and the subsequent political realignments in both Beirut and Damascus. However, given the persistence of the aforementioned structural factors, only partial positive shifts appear likely. These may include the final delimitation of Lebanon’s EEZ with Cyprus and Syria, a possible delimitation of the maritime boundary with the latter, and the initiation of a very complex process of delimiting the Lebanese–Syrian land border. As of today, insurmountable obstacles remain only in the case of any further border settlement with Israel.
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