BICOM

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech yesterday that his organisation would retaliate for any ‘attacks’ by Israel on Lebanese oil and gas installations. The Shia Islamist leader’s words come in the context of a growing dispute between Israel and Lebanon regarding the correct demarcation of the maritime border between them. This issue has come to prominence because of the recent discovery of massive natural gas and oil reserves beneath the sea in this area. Israel and Lebanon have submitted conflicting proposals regarding the border to the United Nations. Israel claims that the coordinates submitted by Lebanon to the UN do not match those stipulated in a maritime border agreement between Cyprus and Lebanon, signed in 2007. Israel’s proposal therefore places the border further north than Lebanon’s. In his speech, Nasrallah sought to mock Israel for what he said were its failures in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. He slammed President Shimon Peres, who said recently that the fact that Nasrallah now lives in hiding and rarely appears publicly was testament to Israel’s achievements in the war. Nasrallah’s speech was given from his place of hiding.

In other Lebanon-related news, five French members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were wounded yesterday when a roadside bomb was detonated near their trucks during a routine patrol in Sidon, in southern Lebanon. At least one of the wounded is described as in ‘critical condition.’