'Pillaging': Firms warned of legal action over Israeli gas exploration off Gaza

Palestinian rights groups have warned that the energy companies awarded licenses by the Israeli occupation regime to explore for gas off the besieged Gaza Strip's coast could face legal action for the violation of Palestinian maritime sovereignty.

The three Palestinian NGOs of Al-Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights raised the alarm after the Israel regime’s energy ministry granted exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean to three companies - Italian energy giant Eni, UK-based Dana Energy and Israel's Ratio Petroleum - three weeks after the brutal war on Gaza in early October.

Lawyers working on behalf of the three rights groups notified the companies in a letter earlier in the month that they would use "all legal mechanisms to the fullest extent" if they proceeded and called on them to “desist” from any activities relating to the licenses.

The Palestinian NGOs asserted that over half of the zone for which the three companies were awarded licenses by Tel Aviv lies within Palestine's maritime boundaries, which were declared in 2015 when the Palestinians acceded to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international agreement providing the legal framework for all marine and maritime activities.

“Israel cannot have validly awarded you any exploration rights and you cannot validly have acquired such rights… We urge you to refrain from signing any of the license documents; and in the alternative, we urge you to desist from undertaking any activities in areas of Zone G that Palestine claims, as any such activities would constitute a flagrant violation of international law,” the three Palestinian NGOs said in the letter shared by the website by Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

“Further still, any attempt to explore for and exploit natural resources claimed by Palestine risks breaching international humanitarian law, including the law of occupation,” they added. “Under that law, Israel has no right to exploit Palestine’s natural resources, including offshore resources, for its own benefit.”

The rights groups stressed that the International Criminal Court currently has an active investigation open into international crimes committed by the Israeli regime in Gaza and has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute any individual it finds responsible for committing war crimes, including pillage.

“Complicity in war crimes like pillage is also a serious criminal offence and corporate actors can be subject to individual criminal liability,” warns the letter. 

UN says Gaza being pushed into abyss amid Israeli assault on Rafah

The UN warning comes as Israeli regime keeps pounding the besieged Gaza Strip with airstrikes and artillery fire more than 130 days into the genocidal campaign.

Moreover, Adalah, an organization that advocates for Palestinians' rights in the occupied territories, was reported to have petitioned Israeli energy ministry and attorney general to revoke the licenses awarded to the companies.

Adalah said Israel’s tendering and awarding of gas exploration licenses violates international humanitarian law and the law of the sea as the illegal entity has not acceded to UNCLOS.

"Israel's move to establish facts on the ground in such a manner are illegal and carried out in bad faith," Adalah said in a letter.

International rights groups and organizations have since October last year censured the Israeli regime's genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

More than 28,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and over 68,000 others injured since the Israeli regime launched its onslaught on Gaza on October 7, 2023, in response to an operation staged by the coastal sliver's resistance movements against the occupied territories.

More than 1.5 million Palestinians -- above half of Gaza's population -- have over the past weeks fled to the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah amid incessant Israeli bombardments throughout the territory.

Tel Aviv is threatening to bring the city under an all-out ground invasion, with international humanitarian organizations warning that the move would spell an unspeakable catastrophe.

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