When it comes to the agreement demarcating the maritime borders between Israel and Lebanon, one must distinguish between legality, strategic usefulness and democratic legitimacy.
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Too many determine their position on legality or legitimacy according to their strategic assessment: the agreement is beneficial, and therefore legal and legitimate (supposedly, or the opposite: they find the deal harmful and therefore illegal and illegitimate.
Moreover, there seems to be some confusion between legality and democratic legitimacy. As an example, Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett established the unity government legally, but whether it was a democratically legitimate process is questionable.
Reviewing Israel's previous agreements with other nations can help understand these distinctions. In 2022, there is almost no dispute about the strategic usefulness of the Camp David Accords, but at the time of their signing in 1978, many viewed withdrawal from Sinai as dangerous and denied autonomy to Palestinians in the territories. And yet, at the time, none of the MKs opposing the move denied the Knesset's legal authority to approve the accord, and not even then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin would have taught not to bring it to the parliament for approval.
The difference between the strategic and legal aspects was clear to everyone. But Begin's opponents at the time, Likud's Geulah Cohen and Moshe Shamir, denied the democratic legitimacy of the agreement, claiming that the prime minister promised territorial integrity as part of his election campaign and opposition to disengagements. In his defense, Begin claimed that his party approved the deal.
Everyone at the time thought that the Knesset's approval was a necessary condition for the legal validity of the agreement, but its opponents claimed that it was not enough to grant it democratic legitimacy, a claim that had validity.
Then came the Oslo Accords. Was it a legal process? Yes. But was it strategically useful? More and more people have come to realize that it was not. Was it democratically legitimate? It was not, as the Labor party concealed from its voters ahead of the election that it was planning on such a political move. Just like Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres too claimed that their party approved the deal.
The agreement was approved by the Knesset, which makes the process legal, but whether it was democratically legitimate remains a question as Rabin took to controversial means in his effort to regain a majority in the Knesset.
As such, the Oslo Accords were legal, but neither strategically useful nor democratically legitimate. Therefore, if – Heaven forbid – the maritime deal with Lebanon is legal even without parliamentary approval, there is a great legal loophole. Instead of taking advantage of it, the government should work to close it.
But we might not even get there, as the interim government does not have the trust of the Knesset.
Regardless of what our strategic opinion is on the deal, approving the agreement in a transitional government, rather than the Knesset itself as recommended by the attorney general, will be a serious scandal.
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