BEIRUT (Dispatches) – The
leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has warned to strike a gas rig the Zionist regime is setting up in a disputed maritime area in the Mediterranean Sea.
Hezbollah’s Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah denounced in a televised address on Thursday the occupying regime’s provocations in the maritime area.
Nasrallah said the resistance movement would not remain “silent” in the face of the Zionist regime’s efforts to plunder the country’s maritime gas resources.
The remarks came after a vessel operated by a Greek company arrived at the Karish gas field in Lebanon’s territorial waters to extract gas for the occupying regime.
“The resistance cannot stay silent in the face of plunder of Lebanon’s resources. The resistance’s essential duty is to protect Lebanon’s land, waters, oil, gas, and dignity,” Nasrallah said, adding, “All options are on the table for the resistance.”
“The enemy does not recognize the international law and resolutions,” he said, reminding that it was not the international regulations but actually “pressure, war of attrition, and resistance” that forced the occupying regime to retreat from southern Lebanon and the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip.
The Zionist regime launched two wars against Lebanon in the 2000s. In both cases, it was forced to retreat after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of Hezbollah. The regime was likewise forced by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza to withdraw its forces and illegal settlers from the coastal sliver of land in 2005.
Nasrallah also said that the U.S. and the Zionist regime are seeking to afflict Lebanon with “hunger and partitioning.”
The Lebanese companies that have pioneered to extract the maritime area’s resources “have been threatened by the U.S. and Israel,” he said, warning that Washington and Tel Aviv were after “shaving off” a large part of the resource-rich area.
Nasrallah’s speech followed a warning by Lebanese President Michel Aoun last Sunday who said that maritime negotiations between the two sides have not ended, adding that any move by the occupying regime — such as drilling in the Karish field that Beirut calls disputed — will be considered “a provocation and hostile act.”