Underwater bluff

Israel is ready to fight for gas fields

An armed conflict may break out in the Middle East over gas fields that were discovered on the Mediterranean coast this spring. The Levantine basin includes the coasts of Israel, Syria and Lebanon. The license for the development of the deposits was issued by Israel, it is maintained by three Israeli companies - Razio, Delek Kiduchim and Avner, as well as the American corporation Noble Energy. At the same time, Lebanon claimed its rights to the deposits. According to experts, undiscovered gas reserves in this area are estimated at 3.45 trillion cubic meters.

Yesterday, Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Lebanese Shiite radical organization Hezbollah, which is part of the government, said that “the Lebanese will not allow Israel to steal their natural gas reserves.” Earlier, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir wrote that the deposits found by American geologists are supposedly located partly in the territorial waters of Lebanon, partly in the territorial waters of Cyprus. According to the publication, “challenging the right to develop deposits will become the subject of a new conflict in the Middle East.” Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri also announced claims to gas fields. In an interview with the Iranian state television channel Press TV, Hariri noted that Israel is trying to intimidate the Lebanese, who will demand part of the proceeds due to them from the sale of “blue gold.”

“We will not hesitate to resort to military force to defend the law and norms of international maritime law,” said Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure Uzi Landau. He added that “the fields are located within Israel’s maritime economic zone.” However, the Dalit, Tamar and Leviathan fields, which according to geologists are the main reserves of natural gas, are located at a distance of 60, 90 and 135 km from the coast of Israel. The territorial waters, which are under the full sovereignty of the Jewish state, extend 22 km from the coast.

According to the Israeli economic publication Calcalist, according to the UN Convention on the Coasts of the Sea, adopted in 1982, any of the three states (Cyprus, Israel and Lebanon) can declare a strip of coastal waters 370 km wide as their exclusive economic zone. None of the states have yet notified the UN about their rights to this section of the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, Israel explains its right to these deposits by the fact that the Jewish state has not signed the UN Convention of 1982 and thus is the de facto owner of a 370-kilometer zone along the coast of all of Israel. According to the publication, sooner or later the Jewish state will have to challenge the rights to these deposits in an international court.

According to Vremya Novostey expert, senior researcher at the Institute of National Security at Tel Aviv University, former Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Zvi Magen, “a conflict in the Middle East can break out in one second, but it is unlikely that the only reason for this will be the fight for gas. This could be just one of the reasons for starting a conflict.” According to another VN interlocutor, a leading specialist at the Israeli Institute for Combating Terrorism, Moshe Marzuk, “information about large gas fields in the immediate vicinity of Israel is nothing more than a bluff, the purpose of which is to increase the prices of shares of certain gas companies.”

Dmitry DUBOV, Maria GRISHINA, Jerusalem