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Israel has dropped more than 18,000 tons of bombs on Gaza since October 8, killing more than 11,000 Palestinians – mostly women, children and elderly people – in a month of relentless air strikes. The Israeli stated goal is to drive the 2.3 million Palestinians out of Gaza and into the desert Sinai.
A top UN official in New York recently resigned his post, calling the events in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide” in which western governments have been “wholly complicit”.
The war has entered its sixth week and the stakes are higher than ever. The Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank are sitting on huge deposits of oil and gas, according to UNCTAD. Israel has been blocking the Palestinians from exploiting these resources for decades.
British Gas (BG) found natural gas in the Gaza Marine fields in 1999, 20 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast and 375 miles deep. They drilled two wells and estimated the field had up to 1 trillion cubic feet of gas.
The Oslo Accords gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) the right to control its own waters in 1995. In 1999, the PA awarded BG a 25-year, 90% license to explore and develop the field. Israel has been obstructing this project ever since.
In 2002, the PA agreed to BG’s plan to build a pipeline to Gaza. But Israel wanted the pipeline to go to an Israeli port and demanded cheap gas from the Palestinians. In 2007, Hamas won the elections in Gaza and Israel imposed a naval blockade, preventing any offshore work. An Israeli gas company, Yam Thetis, also disputed BG’s contract, causing more delays.
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In December 2008, in total contravention of international laws, Israel declared sovereignty over the Gaza Marine area, and BG closed its offices in Tel Aviv.
Royal Dutch Shell bought BG’s stake in the Gaza Marine fields for $52 million in 2016. By March 2018, Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of the deal, leaving the PA to look for another partner. The Gaza Marine field became more attractive in early 2022, after the war between Russia and Ukraine, the collapse of the Nord Stream Pipeline, and the sanctions on Russia triggered a global energy crisis.
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Last June, Israel gave a tentative green light for the development of the gas field off Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying it would depend on “preserving the State of Israel’s security and diplomatic needs” and working with the PA and Egypt. Hamas official Ismail Rudwan told Reuters: “We reaffirm that our people in Gaza have the rights to their natural resources.”
Two months before Oct. 7, the Pentagon started building a $35.8 million base in the Negev desert, 20 miles from Gaza, supposedly as a radar station to protect Israel from missiles. The base is part of a “secret” U.S. military presence in Israel.
Since Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel wants to kill as many Palestinians as possible and force them to leave Gaza and go to Sinai in Egypt. Netanyahu has refused to stop the bombing and let in humanitarian aid to end the genocide in Gaza.
The people of Gaza know, as their grandparents learned in the 1948 Nakba, that once Israel expels Palestinians from their land, they will never be allowed to return.
Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians has not stopped the Israeli regime’s plans for further oil and gas exploration. On October 29, Israel declared that six corporations, including the Italian energy behemoth Eni and British Petroleum, had been granted 12 licenses to explore further offshore natural gas deposits. These contracts demonstrate that Israel will not allow its ongoing slaughter against the people of Gaza to stop it from stealing resources from the Palestinian people.
