Israel wants Gaza’s natural gas deposits

140515-D-BW835-937

This is a couple of weeks old, but still quite relevant:

Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation “won’t end in just a few days,” he said, adding that “we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas.”

This morning, he said:

“We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command… The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy.”

But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya’alon’s concernsfocused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya’alon dismissed the notion that “Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state” as “misguided.” The problem, he said, is that:

“Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel’s past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel…

A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”

Operation Cast Lead did not succeed in uprooting Hamas, but the conflict did take the lives of 1,387 Palestinians (773 of whom were civilians) and 9 Israelis (3 of whom were civilians).

Go read the rest, there’s more.

One thought on “Israel wants Gaza’s natural gas deposits

  1. We all know that the Israelis are thieves. That’s the least of their crimes. Let’s have some fun with the whole topic of cause and effect. You don’t suppose that the downing of that airplane in Ukraine is connected to the Zionist massacre going on in Gaza do you? Russia controls the separatists in Ukraine and the US is controlled by Zionist (neo-con) warmongers. There are also lots of fascists in the “new” government in Ukraine just like there are lots of fascists in the US Congress. We know that they know (1%) what’s going on. But how much of what they (oligarchy) know do we know? About ‘their’ plans for ‘our’ future.

Comments are closed.