The Gaza-Israel War, Energy Interests and the Potential Defeat of Hamas.

On August 20 2014 the war between Hamas in Gaza and Israel resumed after the ceasefire broke down. Three Hamas leaders were killed and the wife and child of Hamas' leader, Mohammed Deif. Rockets were being fired once more from out of the Gaza Strip.

The ceasefire talks broke down as an effective state of war exists. Hamas would not agree to demilitarise and Israel would not lift the blockade unless they did or unless the ending of the armed struggle could be arranged. Hamas negotiators made plain realising this Israeli demand was 'inconceivable'

With the war in Northern Iraq against the Islamic State going on since the ceasefire was tabled, the main global powers attention was focused elsewhere. Should hostilities develop into the same level of war seen previous to the ceasefire, powers such as Britain would need to make good promises to halt certain arms exports.

The reluctance of the British government to criticise Israel for its 'disproportionate' military response are said to be to do with different factors: the power of the Israeli lobby, the profits to be made from the sort of deals which created £185m worth of military exports to Israel in the period 2008-12 and the US backing for Israel.

However, government divisions, with the Liberal Democrats criticising Israel and Warsi resigning because of its “indefensible” policy on Gaza, are based not only on conscience or the need to be seen to be doing the right thing. There are divisions over Britain's foreign policy as it related to energy interests.

The fate of Gaza Marine gas is central to understanding why a conflict dating back 60 years has become more intractable and why the international powers,-the US, Russia and the EU-and regional powers have not been able to come together and mediate effectively.

On the whole, the EU and European states have aligned with Israel because it would seek to benefit from Eastern Mediterranean gas. Just as the reaction to General Sisi's coup in 2013 in Egypt was criticised as part of the "turbulence" by Foreign Secretary William Hague, so too Israel could feel it could deal a deadly blow to Hamas.

What links events in Egypt with Israel is the fact the BG Group, an offshoot of British gas, has the licence to drill for gas in both offshore fields off Egypt and Gaza. Britain has clear commercial interests in the eastern Mediterranean as well as an interest in preserving 'stability', one reason why peace envoy Blair supported Sisi.

With Russia vying for a stake in exploiting the Gaza Marine gas, the EU and US would prefer Israel to be in charge of exploiting the gas, so that it could help the EU reduce dependence upon Russia through importing gas via Cyprus. The PA has been trying to strike deals with Gazprom as part of its diplomacy to get a better deal with Israel.

The US would oppose than but especially the EU. A European Parliament report in April made this clear,

“Global actors are ready to exploit the Eastern Mediterranean [gas field’s] strategic implications....Russia aims to safeguard its gas monopoly, the United States to support its business interest, and Europe to increase its energy security and reduced dependence on Russia in light of the Crimea crisis.”

The report states, that the EU should “back the strategic triangle of Israel, Cyprus and Turkey as a first step towards the construction of an Eastern Mediterranean energy corridor.”. The reason for the empty rhetoric about Israel is not primarily about arms trade profits but about the EU's energy situation.

The only ally Hamas has is Qatar but Qatar is also an ally of the West as it supplies large amounts of liquefied natural gas to Europe. Michael Stevens, a security analyst, asserts, “Qatar is basically Hamas’s last ally. Given that Turkey is struggling and failing to insert itself into the process, Doha really is the only game in town.”

Qatar's regional strategy of supporting Sunni militants in Gaza and Syria is in disarray, however. IS's rise has effectively displaced the Free Syria Army as the main force in northern Syria and the Alawite Shia leader Assad is far stronger than in 2013, with the West also interested in engaging with its backer Iran to defeat IS.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has realised Hamas's weakness as a consequence of Iran no longer supporting it with the conflict in Syria after 2011 opening up sectarian divisions between Shi'te Hizbollah in Southern Lebanon and Hamas as a Sunni militant offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

With Egypt firmly back onside with Israel after the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood backed President Morsi and the recent banning of the Muslim Brotherhood, Israel is in a position to dictate terms and insist that the demilitarisation of Gaza would happen with or without the 'international community' .

Israel and Hamas are locked into a 'war of attrition' in which Hamas could not win and only the Palestinians lose because there is no way in which the Palestinian Authority could benefit from the gas without Israel's approval and that would not be granted as Hamas is an officially designated 'terrorist organisation'.

So long as Hamas remains some form of geopolitical asset for Qatar as a means to prevent Israel developing its full regional energy potential in the Eastern Mediterranean, Qatar has interests in being a supporter of Gaza through investment and infrastructure projects. But this value is rapidly diminishing.

The attempts by Hamas to fire rockets into Israel are achieving nothing but Israeli air strikes in return. One threat that remains is not to the Israeli population, largely protected by Israeli early warning systems and the Iron Dome defence, but is one directed towards Israeli gas rigs in the largely depleted Noa gas field

On August 21th the Haaretz newspaper reported a rocket attack, the 'first of its kind' on gas rigs in the largely depleted Noa gas field 30 km northwest of the Gaza Strip in Yam Tethys. Security in the Gaza Marine fields closer to the Gazan coast might not be so easy to maintain should those reserves be tapped. 

As a consequence where there is a chance Hamas could be eliminated as a military force, Israel would be willing to take the opportunity to do so.

Israel, The Gaza War and the West

'Global revulsion at the mind-numbing carnage of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza seems finally to have spurred some of the western political class to speak out'. Seumas Milne, Gaza is a crime made in Washington as well as Jerusalem, The Guardian, Wednesday 6 August 2014

The reason why British politicians are hastening to position themselves against Israel's ruthless attack on Gaza has as much to do with dormant principles being awoken as with the fact, contrary to Milne's assertion, that Israel is acting completely in defiance of Washington and London.

That is a thought Seumas Milne never has been prepared to entertain. For him, it's quite clear Israel's assault on Gaza is one done with the connivance of 'the West' because he wants to claim only world opinion and outrage, as represented in and through him and his 'journalism' has led to an attitude shift.

However, Israel, has never, followed Washington's line nor was it ever a puppet of 'US Imperial Power', even during the Cold War. But its foreign policy has become increasingly independent in recent years, especially under Netanyahu who detests Obama and his administration for being 'soft' and pro-Arab.

The rise of Qatar as a major trade partner and gas rich oil emirate prepared to back the Muslim Brotherhood accounted for a gradual shift in the foreign policy of the Western Powers which preceded the 2014 War. Qatar was also prepared to back Gaza by supplying aid for infrastructure projects.

Evidently, the value of the arms deals remained a factor in the reluctance of British and US politicians to say anything condemnatory at the outset of current crisis this summer. But the point is that arms deals are usually tied to perceived strategical objectives and often energy interests.

With the collapse of Syria and the ongoing chaos in Iraq and Libya, the states carved out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire during and after the First world War 1914-1918 are coming unravelled. Across the Eastern Mediterranean and Greater Middle East, a new constellation of alignments have emerged.

The important year was 2011. Though Qatar is not a democracy, it used its gas wealth to support its regional policy of promoting Arab democracy in Egypt and Syria. The Obama administration was, in fact, not for the Egyptian coup in 2013 that restored the old order after the revolution of 2011 ( the 'Arab Spring ').

Nor was Britain. The reason was parly an admission that the old order of the secular dictator dating back to the post-1945 era and Cold War realpolitik was over. But it was also a recognition that Arab democracy was necessary is resentments at the old order were not to boil over into support for terrorism.

The Egyptian coup ended that and had to be accepted as an a fait accompli because of two things. Firstly, Russia was vying for influence in the Eastern Mediterranean with the discovery of the large gas reserves of the Levant Basin and was prepared to step in to supply arms to Sisi's military regime.

Secondly, despite an identification with some of Qatar's regional ambitions in tangent with Turkey, especially as part of the Friends of Syria Group-one dedicated to overthrowing Assad-the better to check Iran and advance a Qatar-pipeline, Egypt remained important as a geopolitical bulwark of stability.

Once Washington overcame its intitial hostility to the coup, it hastened to restore full military aid but it had not expected Israel to have taken that as a green light to impose its own 'solution' to its own problem with the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, that is Hamas, with such exemplary brutality.

The Western Powers have been distinctly cool towards Netanyahu's revival of the 'war on terror' pose put forth under the Bush presidency and, as its diplomats and politicians have pointed out, the killing in Gaza is bad in itself but also makes it harder to assert US and British interests in the Middle East.

Israel, it should be remembered, was hostile to the West's backing for Sunni forces in Syria, brokered by Qatar and Turkey and designed to removed Assad. That's why Netanyahu praised Putin's Russia for negotiating the deal to remove Assad's chemical weapons without a military strike.

That, and the fact Israel has sought cooperation with Russia on arms developments and developing the offshore gas fields discovered in its territorial waters in 2010, hardly shows Israel to be a mere tool of the West just as vulgar propagandists such as Milne blithely assume.

Israel, has never, followed Washington's line nor was it ever a puppet or 'a satrapy' of Us Imperial Power, even during the Cold War. But it's foreign policy has become increasingly independent in recent years, especially under Netanyahu who detests Obama and his administration.

Washington, London and Paris have been gravitating towards Qatar because of energy interests and no longer regard the Israeli-Egypt-Saudi block as the main or important player in the Middle East. The growing consternation at the Israeli onslaught is a product of this changed reality.