Raad: Resistance Ready to Perform its Duty if Maritime Zone Threatened
Head of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, stressed Sunday “the Resistance’s readiness to perform its duty.”
“We’re not the side entitled to demarcate our territorial waters, the (Lebanese) State is rather the side entitled to do that, but should this maritime zone come under any threat, danger or attack from the Israeli enemy, the Resistance will be ready to perform its duty,” Raad vowed.
“We had performed this strategy and it had proven its effectiveness and the enemy was disappointed in the July War, but some have not acknowledged it until now,” he added.
Last week Raad warned Israel against developing "a single meter" of disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean to search for offshore gas deposits.
The Lebanese government “will restore the sovereignty of our waters in their entirety," said Raad.
"The Israeli enemy cannot drill a single meter in these waters to search for gas and oil if the zone is disputed ... No company can carry out prospecting work in waters whose sovereignty is contested," he said.
Hizbullah in 2006 fought a deadly war with the Jewish state in which most of Lebanon's major infrastructure was destroyed.
Lebanon's Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour has said the maritime border as proposed by Israel posed a threat to regional security.
The proposed frontier cuts through Lebanon's economic zone, Mansour said, adding that Lebanon would "turn to the United Nations."
The feud over offshore gas fields has deepened since Israel's cabinet on July 12 approved a map of the country's proposed maritime borders with Lebanon to be submitted for a U.N. opinion.
The proposed map lays out maritime borders that conflict significantly with those suggested by Lebanon in its own submission to the United Nations.
Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil has said Lebanon will not give up its maritime rights, and accused Israel of "violations of (Lebanese) waters, territory and airspace, and today our oil rights."
Israel has for months been moving to develop several large offshore natural gas fields, some which are shared with Cyprus, that it hopes could help it to become an energy exporter.
But its development plans have stirred controversy with Lebanon, which argues the gas fields lie inside its territorial waters.
Israel does not have officially demarcated maritime borders with Lebanon, and the two countries remain technically at war.
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