Lebanon And Turkey Insist On Their "Fair" Share Of Israel's Offshore Gas

Not surprisingly, Lebanon is insisting on maritime borders that give it more of the offshore gas that Israel has discovered--and Lebanon has changed the borders it has already agreed to in order to get that offshore gas:Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that the maritime border marks the area of the state economic rights, including the right to exploit natural resources in the sea.


"The area we are discussing borders in the north with Lebanon and Cyprus. The [maritime] line that Lebanon presented to the UN is significantly south of the Israeli line," he said. "It contradicts the line Israel has agreed upon with Cyprus, and what is more significant to me is that it contradicts the line that Lebanon itself concluded with Cyprus in 2007. Our goal is to establish the position of Israel regarding its maritime boundary, according to international maritime law."

The border that Israel claims puts the Leviathan, Tamar and Dalit fields within Israeli maritime borders.

International law appears to support Israel's interpretation of international borders:

The distance between Cyprus and Israel is approximately 260 nautical miles, so an as-yet unpublished agreement was signed by the two countries delimiting a median line. This line allows each state to exploit the natural resources of the seabed up to a distance of approximately 130 miles from its coast. The Tamar and Leviathan fields are well within Israel’s part of this 260-mile zone.

There are all kinds of complications.

For example, there are reports that the US supports the Lebanese claims. However the US support of the Lebanese claims are not based on international law:

The Lebanese also sent their version to the United States, which conducted an expert review and endorsed the document. A senior Foreign Ministry official told Haaretz that the American diplomat in charge of the issue was Frederic Hof, who was responsible for Syria and Lebanon under the former U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Hof has kept the Israel-Lebanon brief despite Mitchell's resignation two months ago.

In April, Hof began shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem. A senior administration official told Haaretz that Hof's main goal was to prevent the border from becoming a source of tension between Israel and Lebanon, which could give Hezbollah a pretext for targeting Israeli gas installations.

Beyond the political and diplomatic interest, the United States has an economic interest in keeping the parties calm, not least because American companies are involved in the search for gas an oil in Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus. Hof told his counterparts in Jerusalem that Israel should cooperate with setting the maritime border to prevent the creation of an "underwater Shaba Farms," referring to a contested area on the Israel-Lebanon border.

This ignores how Israel making another unilateral concession only encourages more such claims and demands.
Israel has said that reports that the US supports the Lebanese interpretation of borders are "nonsense," and that Lebanon's challenge is based on Iran and Hezbollah, which is pushing to cause problems for Israel.

Even Turkey is getting involved:Turkey has raised vociferous objection to the Israel-Cyprus agreement, based on the country’s interest in ensuring that the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus also benefit from the gas income, even though the region is adjacent to the coast of the southern (Greek-speaking) Republic of Cyprus.
Of course, Turkey's problem is that their takeover of Cyprus is recognized by only one country: Turkey.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Leanon and Turkey.