Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, October 27th. I'm Emily Peck in

for Nila Boudou. Today, holding banks to their racial justice promises. Plus, what to

know about staying healthy this winter. But first, the U.S. mediated deal between Israel

and Lebanon. That's today's one big thing.

After more than a decade of U.S. diplomatic efforts, Israel and Lebanon, today, sign a

historic agreement, which is expected to reduce the threat of a regional war. This deal between

Israel and Lebanon, two staunch enemies who are actually still at war, will allow the

beginning of natural gas exploration in a disputed area of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Axios' Barack Revead has been covering this deal and is here with the big picture.

How did this happen and why did it finally close?

Yes. Actually, this is a pretty cool story. For 10 years, the United States have been trying to

get a deal on the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon. The main issue here was, when they

started it, they said, well, there's a potential for natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean and in

this disputed area between those two countries. We need to delineate this border in order for

companies to come in and start gas exploration. Then we'll see maybe you have tons of money.

Money that Lebanon really needs. As the years went by, the economic situation in Lebanon became

worse and worse and worse until the country is on a brink of collapse. For the Lebanese,

this is quite a huge news because it's sort of a hope for some recovery of their economy.

Even though all in all, we're not talking about huge sums of money or revenue. The assessments

say that it's something like $3 billion in revenue from this whole potential gas field,

but it's not only the money. Israel and Lebanon are at war but have

figured out a way to negotiate agreement over natural gas exploration from which they will both

...