Israel's Doctrine of Maritime Sovereignty

Long before the Greek fleets carved their myths into the Aegean, before Carthaginian triremes ruled the western seas, and before Rome emerged from its seven hills, there was another maritime presence that traced the horizon not with conquest but with covenant. This was the Tribe of Dan, the seafaring tribe of ancient Israel, whose banners bore the serpent upon the ship's prow and whose inheritance lay not in ploughlands but in the restless blue of the Great Sea. Around the 12th to 10th centuries BCE, in the age often called the Late Bronze to Early Iron transition, the Tribe of Dan stood as Israel's maritime frontier, the guardians of its western gates, the bridge between the covenantal law of Sinai and the law of the sea. Israel's maritime boundaries possess quasi-official characteristics as they're delineated via bilateral engagements with Egypt and Cyprus, albeit still with gaps where hydrocarbons and crucial shipping routes exist. (Maritime zones law 2014 for the State of Israel). When Claims overlap jurisdictionally, hydrocarbons and shifting regional coalitions confront the fundamental tenets of international maritime law in the Eastern Mediterranean, one of the most densely militarized regions in the world.