Mother Jones shows how Gazan natural gas became the epicenter of an international power struggle.
The Middle East is a region rife with conflict, and a single thread ties them together: the frenzied competition to find, extract, and market fossil fuels. This is a threat that will lead to cataclysmic environmental crises if their future consumption is not curtailed. One conflict that has been largely overlooked is the one at the epicenter of Israel, which began in the early 1990s when Israeli and Palestinian leaders started to dispute the rumored natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza.
This conflict has since grown to involve several armies and three navies, and has already caused immense suffering for tens of thousands of Palestinians. It could also have a devastating effect on the lives of people in Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus, and may even have consequences for Israelis. This is not the first time that resource wars have occurred; throughout history, Western colonialism and post-World War II globalization have been driven by the need to find and market raw materials for industrial capitalism, including Israel’s expansion into Palestinian lands.
However, it was only in the 1990s that fossil fuels moved to the center of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, granting full control of the territorial waters to the newly created Palestinian Authority. It was not until 2000 that a contract was signed between the two parties to develop the confirmed gas fields.
The Netanyahu government’s response was to move quickly to secure the gas fields and to make sure that Israel, not the Palestinians, would control their exploitation. This meant, of course, that the gas would not be used to relieve the Palestinian energy crisis, but rather to power the Israeli economy.
In 2010, the Netanyahu government signed a contract with the Texas-based Noble Energy Company to develop the Leviathan field, the largest of the newly discovered deposits. The agreement promised that the company would finance and manage the development, bear all the costs, and operate the resulting facilities in exchange for 90 percent of the revenues.
The Netanyahu government then declared that the Palestinians had no legal claim to the gas and that, in any case, Israel would never accept their control over the revenues. This was followed by a series of unilateral moves to secure the fields, including a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and a series of air strikes against targets in Lebanon.
The discovery of the Levantine Basin has thus only deepened the resource wars in the Middle East. With no sign of a negotiated solution in sight, the Netanyahu government has made it clear that it will use all available means to secure the gas fields and deny the Palestinians access to the revenues. In doing so, it has made it clear that the region’s energy conflicts are far from over.
The discovery of the Levantine Basin in the eastern Mediterranean has deepened the resource wars in the region, with the Israeli government moving quickly to secure the gas fields and deny the Palestinians access to the revenues. In 2000, with a rapidly expanding economy and a chronic energy shortage, Prime Minister Ehud Barak initiated the era of Eastern Mediterranean fossil fuel conflicts. This led to a 2007 proposal that would have delivered the gas to Israel, not Egypt, at below-market prices, with the same 10 percent cut of the revenues eventually reaching the Palestinian Authority. However, the Israeli government refused to accept even the most limited kind of Palestinian budgetary autonomy, let alone full sovereignty. This was followed by a series of unilateral moves to secure the fields, including a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and a series of air strikes against targets in Lebanon. In 2010, the Netanyahu government signed a contract with the Texas-based Noble Energy Company to develop the Leviathan field, the largest of the newly discovered deposits. The agreement promised that the company would finance and manage the development, bear all the costs, and operate the resulting facilities in exchange for 90 percent of the revenues. The discovery of the Levantine Basin has thus only served to further the resource wars in the Middle East, with no sign of a negotiated solution in sight.
In 2011, the discovery of a vast natural gas field in the Levantine Basin sparked a three-year dispute between Israel and Lebanon. Israel announced the unilateral development of two fields near the Israeli-Lebanese border, prompting Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil to threaten a military confrontation. Hezbollah, the most aggressive political faction in Lebanon, promised rocket attacks if any gas was extracted from the disputed fields. Israel’s Resource Minister countered that they would use force to defend their economic waters.
Oil industry journalist Terzian predicted that no investment would be made in Lebanese waters, as there were no companies capable of carrying out the drilling and no military force to protect them. Israel continued exploration and drilling in the two disputed fields, deploying drones to guard the facilities. The Netanyahu government invested in the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system to intercept rockets and expanded the Israeli navy to deter threats to offshore energy facilities. In 2013, Lebanon began negotiating with Russia to develop offshore claims and gain protection from the Russian navy.
By 2015, a state of mutual deterrence had settled in. Israel had succeeded in bringing online the smaller of the two fields, but drilling in the larger one was stalled due to security concerns. In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad negotiated a 25-year contract with Russia for military support and the expansion of the Russian naval base at Tartus. Thus, the Levantine Basin remained a source of tension between Israel and Lebanon, with Russia playing a major role in the dispute.
The discovery of natural gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean has been a source of tension in the region for the past 25 years. In 2013, Noble Energy, a US-based corporation, signed an exploration contract with the Greek Cypriots, and the Turkish Cypriots responded by signing a contract with Turkey to explore all Cypriot claims. This triggered three years of deadlocked negotiations on the island. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government in Israel contracted with Genie Energy Corporation to locate and develop oil fields in the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by the Israelis since 1967. This move was met with the potential violation of international law, and the government sought to use an Israeli court ruling that the exploitation of natural resources in occupied territories was legal.
In response to the discovery of the Levantine Basin deposits, Israel began shoring up its military presence in the Golan Heights and developed the Iron Dome system to protect its northern gas fields from Hezbollah rockets. The Iron Dome achieved a 90 percent “kill rate” against Hamas rockets during Operation Returning Echo in 2012, but it was not enough to ensure the protection of the country’s exposed oil facilities. This led to Operation Protective Edge in 2013, which sought to deter Palestinian-Russian plans and to eliminate the Gazan rocket systems. Despite unprecedented devastation in Gaza, the operation failed to achieve its goals.
The past four years of maneuvering around the Levantine Basin deposits have produced little energy, but have brought new and powerful claimants into the mix, launched a significant military build-up in the region, and heightened tensions immeasurably. As the region continues to grapple with the implications of the natural gas discovery, the possibility of bigger gas wars with the devastation they are likely to bring looms on the horizon.
