Israeli Rogue Intentions Towards Gaza’s Gas Fields

Written by Claudio Resta on October 27, 2023. Posted in Current News

To understand what one of the objectives of the Israeli attack on Gaza is, you have to go deep, exactly 600 meters below sea level, 30 km off its coast

Here, in Palestinian territorial waters, there is a large natural gas field, Gaza Marine (pictured), estimated at 30 billion cubic meters worth billions of dollars.

Other gas and oil deposits, according to a map drawn up by the U.S. Geological Survey (a US government agency), are located on the mainland in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 1999, with an agreement signed by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority entrusted the exploitation of Gaza Marine to a consortium made up of British Gas Group and Consolidated Contractors (a private Palestinian company), with 60 and 30 percent of the shares respectively, in which the Authority’s Investment Fund has a 10 percent stake.

Two wells, Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2, are drilled.

However, they never come into operation, as they are blocked by Israel, which claims to have all the gas at rock-bottom prices. Through former Prime Minister Tony Blair, envoy of the “Quartet for the Middle East”, an agreement is prepared with Israel which deprives the Palestinians of three-quarters of future gas revenues, paying their share into an international account controlled by Washington and London.

But, soon after winning the elections in 2006, Hamas rejected the agreement, calling it a theft, and called for its renegotiation. In 2007, the current Isra eli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon warned that “gas cannot be extracted without a military operation that eradicates Hamas control in Gaza.”

In 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza.

In September 2012 the Palestinian Authority announced that, despite opposition from Hamas, it had resumed gas negotiations with Israel. Two months later, the admission of Palestine to the UN as a “non-member observer state” strengthened the position of the Palestinian Authority in the negotiations.

However, Gaza Marine remained blocked, preventing the Palestinians from exploiting the natural wealth they have at their disposal. At this point the Palestinian Authority took another path.

On 23 January 2014, in the meeting between Palestinian President Abbas and Russian President Putin, the possibility of entrusting the exploitation of the gas field in the waters of Gaza to the Russian Gazprom was discussed.

This was announced by the Itar-Tass agency, underlining that Russia and Palestine intended to strengthen cooperation in the energy sector. In this framework, in addition to the exploitation of the Gaza field, the exploitation of an oil field near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank was envisaged.

In the same area, the Russian company Technopromexport was ready to participate in the construction of a thermoelectric plant with a capacity of 200 MW.

The formation of the new Palestinian government of national unity on 2 June 2014 strengthened the possibility that the agreement between Palestine and Russia would have come to fruition.

Ten days later, on 12 June, the three young Israelis were kidnapped and found killed on 30 June: the precise casus belli that triggered the “Protective Barrier” operation against Gaza. Operation which was part of Tel Aviv’s strategy, aimed at also taking over the energy reserves of the entire Eastern Basin, including the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian ones, and that of Washington which, by supporting Israel, aimed to control the entire Middle East, preventing Russia from regaining influence in the region.

An explosive mixture, whose victims were once again the Palestinians.

Today Israel’s search for a casus belli against the Gaza Strip, or for a pretext of serious enough to justify an invasion of this territory and possibly the expulsion of the Palestinian people who have lived there for a long time, found an answer in the Hamas attack which goes by the name of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

Without ever forgetting that Hamas formation was founded by the Mossad as an anti-Al Fatah formation (religious terrorism against secular terrorism) in relation to the Al-Aqsa Storm operation only two hypotheses can be made, in my opinion.

The first hypothesis is that it was a false flag operation whose instigator who instigated the terrorists was the Israeli government.

The second hypothesis is that the Israeli government, even without having been directly the instigator who instigated the terrorists, had nevertheless been informed of the imminent attack by Hamas as shown by the Egyptian services and other informants, which it had necessarily monitored live through the electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles and nevertheless had with its voluntary inertia allowed the havoc carried out by Hamas terrorists for a good seven hours before reacting rather than reacting with the utmost promptness.

And this voluntary passivity of the defense of Israel, i.e. the IDF, was motivated precisely by Israel’s search for the casus belli against Hamas or a pretext of such gravity as to justify an invasion of the Gaza Strip and possibly the expulsion of the Palestinian people from it.

And perhaps there was also another very dirty motivation for this inaction or there was maybe also the purpose to discourage and weaken Israeli socialism seen as inconvenient and useless by the pro-capitalist faction.

So on that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War.” and Israel (October 7, 2023) officially declared an illegal war on Palestine. And a very dirty one,too. Don’t ever forget that war is a racket as Smedley Butler taught us.

Behind the purpose of a retaliation and/or freeing of the hostages Netanyahu masks the real purpose of confiscating Palestine’s maritime natural gas reserves as well as and after the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and the outright military occupation of Gaza by Israel’s IDF forces.

What has been unfolding is the integration of these adjoining gas fields including those belonging to Palestine into the orbit of Israel. It should be noted that the entire Eastern Mediterranean coastline extending from Egypt’s Sinai to Syria constitutes an area encompassing large gas as well as oil reserves.

The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law .What can we expect in the wake of the invasion? What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves?

A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?

If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport – pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The last and most complex geopolitical variable to take into consideration is to understand Ankara’s reaction in light of this new escalation of tension. The resurgence of a neo-Ottoman expansionist desire has placed Turkey as the new international godmother of the Palestinian cause.

Erdogan’s sultanate has repeatedly reiterated the need to reformulate the boundaries of the Exclusive Economic Zones of the Eastern Mediterranean area.

Turkey recently proposed a maritime jurisdiction agreement to the Palestinian Authority, similar to the one signed with Libya in 2019.

Officially, Ankara aims to help the Palestinian people take a leading role in regional border disputes.

It is easy, however, to glimpse a clear Turkish nationalistic selfishness aimed exclusively at expanding its political influence in the region.

See more here vtforeignpolicy.com

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