Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas?

Al-Jazeera cites Western alternative media outlets Global Research and Mondoweiss

Western mainstream media never approvingly cite alternative media. Owned and operated disproportionately by Zionist Jews, American MSM tilt strongly towards Israel. So it’s a sure bet that an alternative media story implicitly accusing Israel of committing genocide in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to steal tens of billions of dollars worth of natural resources would never become a front page headline at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or any equivalent outlet.

Al-Jazeera Arabic, the rough equivalent of a combined New York Times and CNN in English, doesn’t play by the same rules. So it isn’t all that surprising that one of its most recent articles on Israel’s attempt to steal Palestine’s gas cites Global Research and Mondoweiss.

Below is my quick-and-dirty improvement on the Google Translate version of the article, with links to its sources.

-Kevin Barrett

The Palestinians are deprived of their wealth. What will happen to Israel’s plans to seize Gaza’s gas?

By Mahmoud Yousef, for Al-Jazeera Arabic

The unprecedented scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of Israel’s war on the Strip for more than 3 months put the Strip’s natural resources in the spotlight, amid international estimates that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources estimated at billions of dollars, and seeks, through its current destructive war, to displace the people of Gaza. 

This comes 10 years after British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot warned that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and "some oil.” At the time, Arbuthnot pointed out in her analysis that governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel,” in an implicit claim that it was Israeli, even though much of it was located in waters off the Gaza strip.

"Israeli treasure”

Israel claims that these reserves off the Gaza Strip are “its own treasure.” But only a small part of this gas is located in the Israeli area.  Arbuthnot added that there is still a lot of gas unexplored that is gradually being discovered.

For his part, Canadian economist Michel Chossodovsky, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research and Felicity Arbuthnot’s collaborator, considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war last October on 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip “a continuation of the invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead.” Chossodowski adds that the primary goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza by Israeli armed forces, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s marine natural gas reserves, which are estimated at billions of dollars, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the Strip, as well as Levant Basin discoveries in 2013.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) indicated at the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation  that one of its goals was to thwart an Israeli plan to seize Gaza and the West Bank and expel the population to both Egypt and Jordan.

Secret conversations

Al-Monitor newspaper reported on October 6, 2022, that the Egyptian regime succeeded in convincing Israel to begin extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks. According to the newspaper, the development came after years of Israeli objections to extracting natural gas off the coast of Gaza for alleged "security reasons."

British Gas also deals with the Israeli government, and pointed out that the Palestinian government in Gaza was bypassed in the agreement regarding exploration and development rights in gas fields. These fields, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, were discovered by British Gas in 2000 and are estimated to contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The newspaper quoted an Egyptian official as saying at the time that “an Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.” The official explained to the newspaper that Israel had projected that it would begin extracting gas from Gaza’s fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its security.

An international vision

According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in 2019, geologists and economists in the field of natural resources confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory is located above large reservoirs of oil and gas, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip.  But the occupation prevents Palestinians from developing and benefitting from their energy fields, so the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs.

The accumulated losses are estimated at billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs, and the greater the total costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians, according to the UN report.

The report specifies assessments of current and potential Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves that can be exploited for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and which Israel prevents them from exploiting, or exploits without taking into account international law.

Reserves swell

Returning to what Arbuthnot mentioned in 2013, Leviathan, the most prominent field ever discovered in the Levant Basin, covers about 83,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with the nearby Tamar field, discovered in 2009, indications point toward considerable energy wealth controlled by Israel, Noble Energy, Avner Oil Exploration, and Ratio Oil Exploration. The estimated reserves of the Leviathan field have already increased from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet of gas to 19 trillion cubic feet. According to Arbuthnot, “the average recoverable oil in the region is 1.7 billion barrels, and the average gas reserves are 122 trillion cubic feet, using a geology-based assessment methodology.”

Gaza resources

Writer Tara Alami said earlier, via the American “Mondoweiss” website, that the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich natural gas  resources that abound on its shores. The attack has deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed thousands in an attempt to empty Gaza of its people and clear it for exploitation by the Occupation.

Alami says that the Israeli project aims to build a racist colonial ethno-state by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries.  The European Union would also participate, since British Gas discovered gas fields off Gaza 25 years ago known as “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2.”  

Alami adds that the Israeli occupation controls the energy and water resources in Gaza, which hinders efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip, while the Occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis.

Alami points to Israel’s interest in extracting gas off the coasts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and attributes this to the Occupation’s goals that are strengthened by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol, such as encouraging settlement expansion and restricting Palestinian access to resources.