To
realize this goal, Seyed Hossein Mousavian says, as the war continued with no
ceasefire in sight, on October 29 Netanyahu’s government awarded 12
licences to six companies, including BP and Italy's ENI, for natural gas
exploration off the Mediterranean Basin area.
Following is the text of the article published on November
15 on Middle East Eye:
After October 07 Palestinian fighters' attack, which killed
around 1,200 people and led to hundreds of hostages being taken to
Gaza, Israel responded ferociously.
It has dropped more than 18,000 tons of bombs on
Gaza so far, killing more than 12,000 Palestinians - mostly women,
children and elderly people - in more than a month of relentless air strikes.
A top UN official in New York recently resigned calling the
events in Gaza a textbook case of genocide in which Western governments have
been wholly complicit.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that his country will not surrender
until Hamas is eliminated.
As the
horrific onslaught enters its seventh week, the issue of energy resources could
add another layer of complexity to the ongoing war.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), significant reservoirs of oil and natural gas have been
found off the Gaza Strip and elsewhere under the occupied West Bank.
"The Occupied Palestinian Territory lies above sizeable
reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the occupied West Bank
and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. However, occupation continues
to prevent Palestinians from developing their energy fields so as to exploit
and benefit from such assets," said the study conducted by UNCTAD in 2019.
In this
context, the issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is vital for Israel.
The Oslo II Accord signed in 1995 gave the Palestinian
Authorities (PA) maritime jurisdiction over its waters up to 20 nautical miles
from the coast, therefore, the PA signed a 25-year contract for gas
exploration with the British Gas Group (BGG) in November 1999.
In
2000, two wells drilled by British Gas off the coast of Gaza revealed
gas reserves estimated at 1.4 trillion cubic feet. Sixty percent of
those reserves belong to Palestinians.
In July 2000, the Israeli prime minister granted BGG
security authorisation to drill the first well, Marine 1, as part of political
recognition by Israel that the well was under PA jurisdiction.
After Russia invaded
Ukraine in February 2022, Europe tried to secure alternatives to
Russian energy supplies, and revived a Palestinian initiative to extract
natural gas off the coast of Gaza. It was hoped that the US$1.4 billion
project - involving the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Israel and Hamas -
could launch gas production by March 2024.
Such a project could have laid the groundwork for
a win-win collaboration between the Palestinians and Israel.
The new resources of oil and natural gas finds in the
Eastern Mediterranean are valued at an astounding US$524 billion.
But as the Israel-Palestine conflict has dramatically
escalated in recent weeks, that no longer appears to be on the horizon, with
the project frozen for the foreseeable future.
Instead, on 29 October, as the war continued with no
ceasefire in sight, Netanyahu’s government awarded 12 licences to six
companies, including BP and Italy's ENI, for natural gas exploration off the
Mediterranean Basin area.
The new resources of oil and natural gas finds in the
Eastern Mediterranean are valued at an astounding US$524 billion. However,
according to the UN report, a significant portion of those assets will have to
be sourced from within the occupied territory of Palestine.
In
addition, during the G20 summit in New Delhi this
September, the US and EU announced their backing for a plan
to build an economic corridor linking India with the Middle
East and Europe - a massive project to rival China’s Belt and Road
Initiative.
Netanyahu described it as a cooperation project
that is the greatest in our history, adding, “Our country Israel will be a
central junction in this economic corridor; our railways and our ports will
open a new gateway from India through the Middle East to Europe, and back.”
Israel’s plan is to become a major exporter of gas and some
oil. In the past 20 years, the country has been transformed from a net importer
of fossil fuels to an exporter of natural gas.
Netanyahu’s
October 2023 declaration of war on Gaza is a continuation of Israel’s previous
invasion of Gaza in 2014 when at least 2,104 Palestinian were killed, including
1,462 civilians. The underlying military objective of the occupation of Gaza is
the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said the plan is
to eliminate everything and another minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said Gaza must be
smaller at the end of the war. Moreover, an Israeli government concept paper proposed
to transfer the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million people to Egypt's Sinai
Peninsula.
However, the ultimate objective is not only to demolish
Hamas and/or exclude Palestinians from their homeland, but to confiscate Gaza's
multi-billion-dollar gas resources.
