Hezbollah warns Israel over gas fields

Mon Jul 18, 2011

Lebanon's resistance movement Hezbollah has warned Israel against violating Lebanese sovereignty by exploring disputed waters in the Mediterranean Sea for offshore gas fields.

"The Israeli enemy cannot drill a single meter in these waters to search for gas and oil if the zone is disputed,” said Mohammed Raad, head of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc, AFP reported on Sunday.

Raad added that the Lebanese government, where Hezbollah holds the majority, will restore the sovereignty of their waters in their entirety.

The controversy over the eastern Mediterranean gas deposits has intensified since July 12 when Tel Aviv approved a map of Israel's proposed maritime borders with Lebanon.

Last week, Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated that the maritime frontier as proposed by Israel, which cuts through Lebanon's economic zone, threatened regional security.

Israel has long been trying to develop several large offshore natural gas fields in the hope that, by exploiting them, it could turn into an energy exporter.

Some of the natural gas fields are shared with Cyprus.

Meanwhile, Gebran Bassil, Lebanon's minister of energy and water, has also stressed that Beirut will not abandon its maritime rights, voicing serious concerns about Israeli "violations of (Lebanese) waters, territory and airspace, and … oil rights."

The Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon in July 2006 with the intention of eliminating the resistance movement. The invasion, also known as the 33-Day War, killed about 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians.

Hezbollah, however, inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli forces and Tel Aviv was compelled to withdraw without having achieved any of its objectives.

Israel violates Lebanese airspace on an almost daily basis, claiming the flights serve surveillance purposes.

Lebanon's government, the Hezbollah resistance movement, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, have repeatedly condemned the overflights, saying they are in clear violation of the country's sovereignty and the UN Resolution 1701, which calls on Tel Aviv to respect Beirut's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189568.html.