MP Mohammad Raad, leader of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc. (Credit: Mountasser Abdallah/ OLJ)
BEIRUT — “We do not want a war, but we’re ready and on alert,” Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc leader MP Mohammad Raad told a party rally in the South Lebanon village of Adshit Saturday. The remarks come after party leader Hassan Nasrallah made incendiary comments Wednesday, amid a maritime border delineation dispute with Israel, L’Orient Today’s South Lebanon correspondent reported.
Here’s what we know:
• “The gas in our exclusive economic zone is our right and we, more than anyone, have the right to extract it,” Raad said, adding that “when we evoke the option of a war that would allow us to live nobly without having to beg, we mean that we are free and you should know who you’re dealing with.”
• On June 5, Israel deployed a floating production, storage and offloading vessel to the disputed Karish offshore gas field, stirring up tensions with Lebanese officials, and prompting Hezbollah to dispatch surveillance drones to the field, which the Israeli military shot down. In his comments, Nasrallah described the drones as a “modest beginning,” adding that “the threat of war is more honorable than succumbing to threats of starving the Lebanese.”
• “We will not renounce our right to use our hydrocarbon resources or to delineate the border of our sovereignty,” Raad continued, noting that “it’s our decision to make. We stand by every loyal person in the state to protect the dignity of the country and its population, all communities and regions included, even those who do not understand what is at stake,” a reference to the backlash against Nasrallah’s comments.
Additional reporting by Mountasser Abdallah