(Ha'aretz) Hila Raz and Avi Bar-Eli - Lebanese media have rushed to declare that Israel's offshore natural gas fields actually belong to Lebanon. Hizbullah Executive Council head Hashem Safieddine said the organization would not allow Israel to loot Lebanese gas resources. The head of petroleum and natural gas exploration in Israel's National Infrastructures Ministry, Dr. Yaakov Mimran, called the claims "nonsense." He said the latest offshore discoveries in the Leviathan field, as well as the earlier Tamar and Dalit fields, are absolutely within Israeli territory. Senior Israeli officials said it was Lebanon that set the limits on its own territorial waters after it had given out exploration licenses exactly along these borders. Prof. Moshe Hirsch of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an expert in international law, explained that the gas is under Israel's continental shelf.
2010-06-25 09:23:16Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive