Water zone right

Cabinet law reclaims 854 square kms to the south, overlaps with Israel’s demarcation

The Cabinet approved the proposed borders of the country’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Parliament had ratified, in August, a draft law that demarcates the country’s maritime border with Israel and Cyprus, according to the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea.

According to the law, the country’s baseline (marine borderline) extends across the low-water line from the Nahr el-Kabir basin up north, to the Southern village of Naqoura (according to the borders of the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel). The baseline measures the breadth of the territorial sea of a coastal state.

The ‘territorial sea’ extends from the baseline up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles (around 22 kilometers).
The law also identified the country’s contiguous zone (adjacent to its territorial sea). The contiguous zone extends up to a limit not exceeding 24 nautical miles from the baseline.

The state has the right to prevent and punish infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration, or sanitary laws and regulations within its territorial sea and the contiguous zone.

The law identified the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baseline. The state is allowed to practice sovereign rights in the waters in its exclusive economic zone for the purpose of “exploring and exploiting, conserving, and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living.”

The implementation of the law, in terms of the demarcation of the different maritime zones will be made through decrees taken in Cabinet.

The law reclaimed an area of around 854 square kilometers from the southern side of the country’s coastal line. Through the inclusion of the reclaimed area, Lebanon’s exclusive economic zone now lays within the borders of the zone Israel has demarcated.