Is Israel’s ‘buffer zone’ inside Lebanon an attempt to grab gas reserves?

Published 12 June 2026 · world

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

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. What do we know about Lebanon’s offshore natural gas reserves? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.