JERUSALEM

Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he will “neutralize” a recent maritime border deal with Lebanon if he is elected prime minister.

“I will behave as I did with the Oslo Accords,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Army Radio.

He said that the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians “were not canceled, they were neutralized.”

The former premier, however, did not detail his specific intentions for the border agreement with Lebanon during his Monday interview.

Last week, Israel and Lebanon signed a US-mediated deal to demarcate the maritime border between the two countries. The deal covers an area in the Mediterranean Sea, which contains part of the Karish gas field and Qana, a prospective gas field.

Netanyahu had termed the maritime deal as “illegal”, saying he would not be bound by it. He claimed that Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, “didn't want to extract the gas in the first place, but now they want to surrender it to Hezbollah."

Israeli voters will go to polling stations on Tuesday in the country’s 5th legislative election in less than four years.

Opinion polls suggest that Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud Party, could come within a single seat of an outright majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).

*Ikram Imane Kouachi contributed to this report.