Lebanon ready to defend self against any Israeli aggression: President

Rasa - President Michel Aoun has censured Israel’s repeated violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty, saying Beirut is prepared to counter any potential threat from the Tel Aviv regime.

News ID: 436622

Date: 27 February 2018 - 23:36

RNA - “Lebanon is keen on maintaining stability and calm in South Lebanon, but it is also ready to defend itself shall Israel carry out an assault,” Aoun said in a meeting with UN Under-Secretary General Jean-Pierre Lacroix in Beirut on Monday.

Aoun further denounced Tel Aviv for using the Lebanese airspace for strikes against Syria, saying the regime continues to violate UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

The resolution which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Tel Aviv to respect Beirut’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Aoun added that an Israeli plan to build a wall along Lebanon’s southern border was “an additional violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

The Lebanese government says the wall passes through territory, which belongs to Lebanon but is located on the UN-designated Blue Line demarcating the regime’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

The wall, Beirut says, would breach Lebanese territory at 13 different points, calling for “corrections” along the Blue Line.

According to Press TV, over the past weeks, the Tel Aviv regime has escalated its threats against Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas exploration projects.

Lebanon and Israel have nearly come to blows over a tender by Lebanon in December for oil and gas exploration projects in two of the country’s 10 offshore blocks in the Mediterranean Sea, namely Block 4 and Block 9.

Israel, which claims sovereignty over the ninth block and claims it runs into its side of the Mediterranean, has blasted the move as “very provocative.”

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, the country's de facto military power, has vowed to defend the rights of its homeland in oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean region against any new Israeli aggression.

Hezbollah helped the Lebanese army defend the nation against two bloody Israeli wars in 2000 and 2006.

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