With Hindsight

 See also: Rogue State? (oldandireland.blogspot.com)

And: Two Wrongs……. (oldandireland.blogspot.com)

So we have reached the one year mark in Israel’s conflict in Gaza.  Time for a little reflection.

1)   After the original and totally horrific Hamas attack, questions were asked about how the Israeli security agency had apparently managed to completely miss all the preparations that must have been necessary for the attack.  I must point out here that I am making no excuses for the Hamas attack.  It was brutal, appalling, inhuman (continue to insert your own descriptives here, none of them will fully describe just how wrong the Hamas attack was).  Any questions raised about the Israeli security agency seem to somehow to have been lost in the brutality and genocide that have happened since the original attack.

I was wondering about this though.  The agency that managed to miss a Hamas breakout of that size, does not sound to me like the same agency that managed to know of, intercept, and plant explosives in pagers and radios destined for Hezbollah without anyone else knowing.  The same agency that claims to be able to target Hamas and Hezbollah operatives and arms in both foreign countries and war zones with pinpoint accuracy and without error.  Can these two really be part of the same organisation?  It sounds implausible to me, but I am no expert.  The Israeli’s lack of any real effort to secure the release of their hostages also seems somewhat suspect to me.  Could they, and all the Palestinian civilians that have been killed merely be collateral damage?

Then I vaguely remembered reading of a strange scenario in a previous Israel v Palestine conflict some years ago.  Skimming back through some of my old books eventually brought me to this quote.  It is from a book by esteemed journalist John Pilger (unfortunately he died last year), that was first published in 2002, so we are back in the times of Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon.  The book is called, ‘The New Rulers of the World'.

 

“Blair’s support for the Sharon regime goes even deeper.  In may and July 2001, the authoritative ‘Jane’s Foreign Report’ disclosed that Britain and France had given ‘the green light’ to Sharon to attack Arafat if the Palestinian resistance did not stop.  The British government was shown a plan for an all-out Israeli invasion and re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, ‘using the latest F-16 and F-15 jets against all the main installations of the Palestinian Authority [and] 30,000 men or the equivalent of a full army’.

However, the Israeli plan needed a suicide bomb blast ’which causes numerous deaths and injuries.  The “revenge” factor is crucial.  It would motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians’.  (Jane’s Foreign Report, May and July 2001.  See also Akiva Eldar, ‘Big Pines II – Rumours are rife of an invasion plan’ Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv, July 10, 2001.)  What concerned Sharon and his inner circle, notably the author of the plan, Brigadeer-General Shaul Mofaz, then Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Arafat and Hamas, the Islamic organisation responsible for most of the suicide attacks, that these attacks would be stopped in Israel proper.  Following September 11, the Sharon regime worried unnecessarily that a Middle East ‘solution’ would be a bi-product of America’s ‘war on terrorism’, especially when George W Bush blurted out a non sequitur that he had always backed the ‘dream’ of a Palestinian state.  Something had to be done. 

On November 23, 2001, Israeli agents assinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hanud.  Twelve days later, the inevitable response came in co-ordinated suicide attacks against Israel.  'Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hanud knew in advance that that would be the price’ wrote Alex Fishman, the well connected intelligence writer, in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot.  ‘whoever gave a green light to this act knew full well that he is therefore shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [which was] not to play into Israel’s hands by mass attacks on its population centres'.

On cue, Sharon’s forces attacked the Occupied Territories with unprecedented force,”

 

Could it be that Israel has been callous enough to use its own citizens again in this manner?  If the mere threat of a Palestinian state was sufficient cause to throw it’s own citizens and Palestinian civilians under the bus 20 years ago, then what might be the motivation to do the same this time around?

See this from Wikipedia:  ‘Gaza Marine is a natural gas field off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Marine natural gas field is located in water about 36 kilometres (22 mi) offshore at a depth of 2,000 feet (610 m).[1] The field was discovered in 2000 by BG Group and it is estimated to contain more than 1 trillion cubic feet (28.32 km3) of natural gas.

On 18 June 2023, the Israeli government gave preliminary approval for its development, while requiring security coordination with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt.’

Gaza is an occupied territory.  Israel has no right to be involved in anything to do with natural resources within that area, but I can easily see how a suddenly wealthy Hamas would be a worrying prospect for Israel.

See also this from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/6/israel-is-pillaging-not-just-gazas-cities-but-also-its-waters:  ‘Palestine is a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and has declared its maritime boundaries in accordance with these principles.

Israel has not signed UNCLOS. It also does not recognise the state of Palestine and has recently doubled down on this position with a vote in the Knesset to “oppose a unilateral recognition of the Palestinian state” despite growing calls globally, including from the US, its main sponsor, for a two-state solution.

The combination of these positions has given Israel the excuse for not recognising the maritime borders of Palestine and for expropriating the resources in these areas. These Israeli claims, of course, do not make its actions legal.’

OK, all sources are biased, including our own media like the BBC.  Yet I think it is possible to see some things in Israel’s war on Hamas, Hezbollah and others.  The quote below is from: https://diem25.org/is-natural-gas-the-real-reason-for-the-genocide-in-gaza/#:~:text=Oil%20and%20gas%20wars,for%20Palestine%20during%20its%20lifetime.

Diem25 is a growing left wing political party in Europe, so take what they say with caution.  None the less, they do have the backing of many leading academics in Europe, and their references seem sound from what I can see, so I will leave a final quote to them.  Leviathan is a basin containing the largest gas reserves in the whole of the Mediterranean.  it runs from the North of Lebanon, to Israel's border with Egypt.  Gaza Marine is a nicely accessible part of that basin.

A BBC report at lunchtime today on the deaths of more the 20 civilians outside a hospital complex in Gaza as a ‘targeted attack on Hamas operatives’.  It that targeted or just murder?  What is this war all about?  Read this, then read anything else you can find on the conflict, then make your own mind up.

‘Oil and gas wars

In June, Israel approved the development of Gaza Marine, the strip of water off the Gazan coast containing an estimated 1tn cubic feet of natural gas. Offshore Technology said the field would produce about 2.4bn dollars in royalties and profits for Palestine during its lifetime. As the website also noted, Gaza Marine is closer to shore than Israel’s existing oil and gas fields, making it cheaper to develop.

Meanwhile, after Europe cut off Russian oil and gas supplies in 2022, Israel signed a deal with the EU to become a keystone supplier.

Joseph Dana, a market analyst and journalist, wrote at the time that the plans would “radically transform” Israel’s relationship with the rest of the world over its occupation of Palestine. In particular, Dana highlighted how new Israeli oil and gas prospects could make pro-Palestinian campaigns in Europe effectively “meaningless”.

Leviathan, with 22.9 TCF of recoverable gas, is the largest natural gas reservoir in the Mediterranean, and one of the largest producing assets in the region.

The reservoir was discovered in December 2010 by NEWMED Energy (with a working interest of 45.3%), Chevron (which was called “Noble Energy” at the time, with a working interest of 39.7%) and Ratio (with a working interest of 15%).

The main issue: there are about two million Palestinian residents in the area. So, where should they go? To the Sinai desert? Says who? Says Netanyahu, who faces a litany of bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges, as a New York Times report lays bare.

So, is there any indication that this is already happening? According to Wikileaks and two newspapers of Israel, it is.

A week after the Hamas attack, Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence issued a secret ten-page document outlining the expulsion of the Palestinian population of Gaza to northern Sinai, in Egypt:

 

Instruct Palestinian civilians to vacate north Gaza ahead of land operations

Sequential land operations from north to south Gaza

Routes across Rafah to be left clear

Establish tent cities in northern Sinai and construct cities to resettle Palestinians in Egypt

The document has been verified by an official from the Ministry of Intelligence, according to the Hebrew website Mekomit which originally published the document. Mekomit noted that documents from the Ministry of Intelligence are advisory and not binding.

Is there any solution right now, to stop this bloodbath? The path has been indicated by the United States and the European Union, with their sanctions on Russia amid the war in Ukraine: reduce the financial power of the aggressor, by boycotting whatever finances aggressiveness.

But, with Israel being such a close ally to the aforementioned pair, both politically and financially, it is glaringly obvious that Netanyahu’s government will not face such a response.’