Is Israel’s ‘buffer zone’ inside Lebanon an attempt to grab gas reserves? | Israel attacks Lebanon | Al Jazeera
play<br>Live
Click here to searchsearch<br>Sign up
ListenListen (11 mins)<br>Save
Click here to share on social media<br>share-nodesShare<br>facebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylink
googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo
People sit on rocks on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in Beirut, Lebanon, April 4, 2026 [Yara Nardi/ Reuters]
By Alex Milan Durie
Published On 12 Jun 202612 Jun 2026
Israel’s imposition of a “security buffer zone” in southern Lebanon that extends into Mediterranean waters has alarmed experts who say it’s a bid to occupy Lebanon’s maritime territory, which has potential oil and gas reserves.<br>A map of the “buffer zone”, which is demarcated by what Israel calls the “Yellow Line”, was announced by Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, on April 19, days after the United States brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.<br>Recommended Stories<br>list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Israel continues attacks on Lebanon despite extension of ceasefire<br>list 2 of 3What lies ahead for Gaza after ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon?<br>list 3 of 3Israel threatens Gaza war resumption to force disarmament as ‘truce’ frays<br>end of list<br>Israel claimed it required the buffer zone – which stretches roughly 10km (6 miles) north of the Lebanon-Israel border and represents about 6 percent of Lebanese territory – to prevent attacks from Hezbollah fighters.<br>Since then, Israeli troops attacked well beyond the Yellow Line, raising concerns about what the country might also seek from Lebanese waters. Israel has killed close to 3,700 people in Lebanon, in violation of the April ceasefire. The US-Israel war on Iran spilled over into Lebanon after Hezbollah fired at Israel on March 2 in response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.<br>An October “ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, which was also brokered by the US, created a similar Israeli buffer zone, under which Israel is occupying more than 60 percent of the enclave’s territory.<br>(Al Jazeera)What do we know about Lebanon’s offshore natural gas reserves?<br>Experts told Al Jazeera that the new “defence zone”, or “buffer zone”, not only violates the ceasefire but also absorbs Lebanon’s Qana gas project, whose exploration rights were explicitly guaranteed to Lebanon under a 2022 US-brokered maritime border agreement with Israel.<br>Advertisement
Israel’s new demarcation line into Lebanon’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea absorbs two blocks that are part of the Qana gasfield that border Israeli waters: Block 9 and Block 8, where gas exploration is due to begin.<br>In January, weeks before the US and Israel launched the war on Iran, France’s TotalEnergies, Italy’s Eni and QatarEnergy signed an offshore exploration permit with the Lebanese government for Block 8.<br>Reports of potential gas and mineral reserves off the Levantine coast go back as far as the early 1990s, but efforts to exploit them began in 2010 when the Lebanese government passed a hydrocarbon law that granted oil companies exploration and production rights.<br>Since 2010, however, Lebanon has not seen much progress regarding offshore gas exploration, and what has been done has been disappointing to many, especially as government officials have spent years touting an energy revolution as a potential game-changer for a country that has endured years of financial crises.<br>Laury Haytayan, a Lebanese oil and gas expert and the Middle East-North Africa director of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Al Jazeera that Lebanon has 10 offshore blocks. “Only one, Block 8, has a contract for hydrocarbon activities,” she said.<br>She added that exploration on Block 4, which started in 2020, was abandoned because it was not economically feasible. Nothing was found in Block 9 either, she said.<br>“That’s why we don’t have any proven reserves to determine the financial value of these resources,” Haytayan said, adding: “Not all resources discovered are going to be exploited. The proven reserves are the ones you can exploit.”<br>What is the Lebanon-Israel 2022 maritime agreement? Is Israel in violation of it?<br>After more than a decade of tensions over the demarcation of their maritime borders, Israel and Lebanon signed a demarcation agreement on October 27, 2022, which was mediated by the US. Under the agreement, the two countries established a clear maritime boundary to settle their dispute over an area of 860sq km (332sq miles).<br>“It is not purely a maritime boundary agreement but also a partnership agreement on how to explore and exploit the resources that may overlap between the two states,” Aref Fakhry, a maritime lawyer and associate professor at the World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden, told Al Jazeera.<br>Lebanon technically doesn’t recognise the state of Israel, so the US...