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Lebanon’s Hezbollah has escalated its threats to Israel over the disputed maritime zone, where lucrative oil and gas reserves are located.
On July 31, the group’s Military Media released a video message with reconnaissance footage of a number of vessels currently operating at the Karish gas field, including the Greek-owned Energean Power FPSO [Floating Production Storage Offloading] which reached the disputed field in June to extract gas for Israel.
The video message starts with a quote from a recent speech of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hasan Nassra that reads “playing with time is useless” in both Arabic and Hebrew.
The video, titled “In Sight,” also includes footage of a Noor anti-ship missile launcher of Hezbollah. The Noor missile is the Iranian copy of China’s advanced C-802. The missile has a range of more than 170 kilometers, which means that it can comfortably hit vessels operating at Karish which is located just 90 kilometers from Lebanon’s shores. Hezbollah used two Noor missiles to target the Israeli Navy Sa’ar 5-class corvette Hanit during the war of 2006.
This was not Hezbollah’s first threat to Israel over its operations in the disputed maritime zone. Between June and July, the group flew a number of unarmed drones on reconnaissance missions near Karish, in a step that was apparently meant to intimidate foreign firms operating in the gas field under contracts with Israel.
Hezbollah released its video message as US special envoy Amos Hochstein arrives in Beirut to try to resolve the Israel-Lebanon maritime dispute.
Israel is preparing to extract gas from Karish in September. Lebanese officials are optimistic that the maritime dispute can be resolved by then. However, Hezbollah believe that Israel is stalling. Nasrallah has already warned that his group will prevent Israel from extracting gas from the field if no agreement was reached with Lebanon.
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