°®Âþµº

Lebanon will not allow Israel to build a wall on Lebanese land, the country's defence authority vowed Wednesday.

The higher defence council described Israel's plans to build a separation wall between the two countries as an attempt to annex Lebanese land and an act of aggression.

"This wall - if it is built - will be considered an assault on Lebanese land," the secretary general of the council said in a statement, according to Reuters.

"The higher defence council has given its instructions to confront this aggression to prevent Israel from building (the wall) on Lebanese territory."

Lebanon's political leadership have struck a similarly united and defiant tone on the issue.

President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri - who represent the country's main religious factions - said Tuesday that a wall on Lebanese territory will not be tolerated.

The three leaders viewed "Israeli threats, and saw in them... a direct threat to the stability", a statement from the president said.

Lebanon is also at loggerheads with Tel Aviv over Israeli claims to what it views as its waters.

The areas of dispute are part of Lebanon's latest push to develop prospective oil and gas fields off its coast.

Aoun, Hariri and Berri agreed "at various regional and international levels to prevent Israel from building the cement wall... and from the possibility of infringing on Lebanon's oil and gas wealth and its (territorial) waters".

An Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 led to the establishment of the UN's so-called "blue line" between the two countries.

Lebanon contends that some of the territories Israel still occupies is part of its territories.

Beirut also claims the Shebaa Farms area of the Golan Heights, which was illegally annexed by Israel following war with Syria in 1967.