The Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said that if Lebanon is prevented from benefiting from its oil wealth, Israel will not be able to extract or sell gas and oil.
On the second of this month, Hezbollah launched 3 unarmed drones towards the disputed area with Israel at the Karish marine field, while the Israeli army announced its interception.
In a televised speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah added that "if matters reach the negative conclusions in the negotiations to demarcate the southern maritime borders of Lebanon, his party will not stop at the Karish field borders, but will establish what he described as a "post-Kareesh equation", to repeat a threat he made. A few weeks before the 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, when it threatened to strike "Haifa and beyond Haifa."
The indirect negotiations to demarcate the maritime borders, which were launched between Israel and Lebanon in 2020, with American mediation, were suspended in May last year after the fifth round, due to differences over the area of the disputed region in the Mediterranean.
The crux of the dispute
At its launch, the talks were supposed to be limited to a maritime area estimated at about 860 square kilometers, whose borders are defined by Line 23, based on a map Lebanon sent in 2011 to the United Nations, but Lebanon later saw that the map was based on wrong estimates, and demanded to search an area of 1,430 square kilometers Additional, including parts of the Karish field, known as Line 29, which Israel rejects.
Israel has already started work in the Karish oil field via a ship operated by the London-based "Energean" company, and Beirut says that the field is within a disputed area with Tel Aviv.
Regarding the drone attack earlier this month, Nasrallah said that this was the "first time" that such an attack had taken place, and that it was aimed at alerting the workers on board the ship that it was "not a safe area."
The Secretary-General of Hezbollah hinted at launching more attacks, saying that the party has military capabilities on the ground, air and sea, and can deploy "a large number of drones at the same time, at one time and on one target."
"golden opportunity"
Nasrallah saw that Lebanon has a "golden opportunity" in the next two months to secure its maritime rights before Israel completes work in the Karish field, and urged Lebanese officials to use his party as leverage, saying that Hezbollah is the "only force" in Lebanon.
The official Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported a few days ago that the American mediator in the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, Amos Hochstein, will be part of the delegation led by US President Joe Biden, who will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories on Thursday.
Hochstein is scheduled to meet with Israeli Energy Minister Karen Al-Harrar and the Israeli negotiating team, where he will brief them on the Lebanese position regarding the demarcation of the water borders between the two sides.
It is noteworthy that the American mediator recently visited Beirut and held meetings with Lebanese officials, including President Michel Aoun, in an effort to find a settlement formula regarding the demarcation of the maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel.