Resource Wars: Israel, Egypt and the Dim Prospects for Peace Over Gaza

The prospects for peace between Israel and Gaza were bad enough and have grown dimmer due to the 2014 war. Both sides are predictably trying claim victory already. Actually, neither have won. The difference is the balance of terror lies decisively in Israel's favour in this brutal pyschopathological struggle.

From Netanyahu's perspective, the strategy is about forcing Hamas to surrender by whatever means (no matter the civilian casualties ) so they agree to demilitarise. But to get to that point he was ready to use a clearly 'disproportionate' amount of military force instead of one other thing-diplomacy.

From his perspective Israel cannot get a sustainable peace without war. As in Orwell's novel 1984, 'war is peace'. Hamas has to pretend that all the civilian dead are glorious martyrs to their cause in a jihad in which all the deaths and massacres could bring about a moral victory over the oppressor.

Hamas would not agree to demilitarise and have demanded the blockade to end. However, Israel would not agree to as it part of their strategy for national security. There is evidence that the wrangle over Gaza is being made more protracted by the fate of the Gaza Marine gas reserves.

Israel fought this war with ferocity because it wanted to crush Hamas and eliminate it as a potential proxy force while Hizbollah had been drawn deeply into the Syrian conflict by 2013. Despite Netanyahu's claims, Iran's backing for Hamas had declined dramatically due to sectarian enmities coming to the fore.

With Iran distracted and the Egyptian authoritarian regime of Sisi having destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2013 coup, Netanyahu went for Hamas while the time was right. One aim is to secure Israel's southern flank from rocket attacks because this would set back setting up gas rigs.

As Forbes magazine reported in January 2014,

'The rigs required to lift the gas from the sea floor are a target that some commentators have referred to as a “sitting duck” for terrorists. The gas platforms are to be situated outside of Israeli territorial waters, but inside Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), an area roughly twice the size of Israel itself'

One reason for the divided and vacillating response from the Western Powers was that major energy corporations have a stake in aiding Israel in tapping these reserves. Whether the US group Noble Energy or else Britain's BG Group in regards to Gaza Marine. 

That backing for Israel and Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean, however, has been complicated by the fact that Britain and the US's other regional partners in the region, Turkey and Qatar, are backing Hamas as part of a strategy to check Israel's dominance of the offshore reserves.

Increasingly, Britain and France draw much of their import of liquefied natural gas from Qatar and have formed bilateral trade ties to the gas rich emirate. This accounts for the start of a shift away from the position of backing Israel to criticism of its conduct of this war as much as humanitarian principles.

The problem is that Israel is acting unilaterally over Gaza so as to be able to tap the reserves as quickly as possible as a vital 'existential' interest that would put it in such as position to guarantee both its independence and importance for the West against Qatar and Turkey's rival ambitions.

Israel is going to be intransigent on the demilitarisation of Gaza and maintaining the blockade as it is regarded as necessary to ensure the energy security both of it and Egypt which, under Morsi in 2012, cut off its gas supply as it faced, and still does, a fuel crisis and economic deterioration.

The prospect for peace is low as Egypt is confronted with collapse if it were not able to import energy from Israel as agreed in in June 2014. As Egypt is seen as a key partner in defeating a jihadist insurgency raging on the Sinai Peninsula, Israel regards destroying Hamas as part of that wider battle.

Israeli national security involves energy both as a nationalist goal as a Gift from God. So Hamas is regarded as one of the threats to the exploitation of their gas reserves ( even those in Israel's territorial waters ) through rocket attacks and sabotage just as Hizbollah could from the north.

Such reasons for the blockade of Gaza not being emphasised in the Western media very much at all. Without the gas the regional security nexus with Egypt would be under threat. Since the 1970s has depended on Egypt to maintain the security of the borders with Israel in Sinai.

Even worse, there is a jihadist insurgency in Sinai at present and pipelines from Egypt to Israel were targeted and blown up in the past . Making the need to exploit the gas more and more important. Compromise could be difficult as Israel fears Hamas being used by Qatar to disrupt its regional energy strategy.

So the ceasefire could well not lead to a durable peace. Israel is not going to trust Hamas 'perhaps ever' as Tony Blair sinisterly intimated at the outset of the conflict on July 15 . Blair is hopeless as UN Quartet's Special Envoy to the region and has sided too obviously with Egypt and Israel against Turkey and Qatar.

Blair's bias and Netanyahu's nationalism means Israel has no interest in offering a Hamas controlled Gaza anything that would affect its energy security or enable Qatar and Turkey in alliance to use Hamas as a bargaining chip in what are increasingly dangerous geopolitical struggles for control over the gas fields and energy routes.

Tony Blair's Role as Special Envoy for the Middle East Quartet.

'Last week he was in the Middle East....He says he is "saddened and angry" by what is happening in Gaza. He says he wants to see a two state solution. Whatever you think of Iraq, we did lead in the world, he says'.

Blair is using this twentieth anniversary of his becoming Labour leader in 1994 to spin his legacy as some far seeing political visionary whose approach retains 'clarity of purpose'. Yet Blair is going to be remembered for Iraq, a war that cost billions, and creating a debt fuelled economy that crashed in 2007-8.

The attempt to use his position as Special Envoy to the Middle East Quartet to 'frame the issues' on the need for a continued global war on Islamist terrorism everywhere, as though it were one seamless totalitarian threat, shows that he remains attached to discredited 'neoconservative' ideas in foreign policy.

Even so, Blair's ideology is what unites his position on Iraq with that of Gaza. The agenda is to first support Israel in crushing Hamas the better to force Palestinian leaders into agreeing to an Israeli settlement in which the gas wealth of Gaza would be used to benefit Israel first then Palestinians.

The same idea of 'trickle down' economics was behind Blair's support for the Iraq War" invade it, get rid of the dictator, allow Iraq's oil wealth to fund the reconstruction of the nation while allowing the west to diversify its oil supply. The result was a greater war within Iraq between those vying for its oil wealth.

Likewise, in Gaza, Blair's idea as a 'man of peace' invested with the duty to create 'stability' is in advocating Israeli control over the gas according to a deal he brokered back in 2011 whereby the BG Group ( formerly British Gas ) would sell the Gazan gas reserves to Israel instead of Egypt.

First and foremost, it is as a broker of gas deals Blair makes himself useful. It is secondary whether than actually creates peace because that could only happen if Hamas were to surrender authority and control over Gaza and not as a consequence of any concession Israel could make.

When the current conflict between Israel and Hamas broke out, Blair made it clear there was no chance of peace between the two. As Blair made quite plain “[There will be] ”no trust on either side between Hamas and Israel. That is not going to happen in the immediate term and possibly ever”.

Blair essentially supports the policy of Israeli PM Netanyahu in using a military solution to eliminate Hamas in Gaza as he sees Hamas as a terrorist organisation no less than ISIS or Al Qaida and so no less fundamentally evil than in having a dictator such as Saddam Hussein in control of resources in Iraq.

Egypt, of course, is different for Blair because Sisi is a secular authoritarian and not a theocratic or ideologically fanatical dictator. One reason Blair supported the coup was that it was necessary to create 'stability' and to get the economy functioning and the fuel crisis Egypt faces solved in alliance with Israel.

To that end, Blair supports a reinvigorated Israeli-Egyptian security and energy nexus as does the US and EU states, hoping that Israeli gas could be used to help European nations avoid being overdependent upon Russia for gas and to enrich the elites in the PA so as to get them onside in the 'peace process'.

However, Blair also believes that the exploitation of Israeli gas reserves and the elimination of Hamas would benefit Russia as well. One reason Israel has been able and willing to try to finish off Hamas is that it lacks regional support following the coup in Egypt in 2013 and the Syrian conflict.

In 2014 Russia's Gazprom was set to help develop Gaza's gas field.Israel has taken a more pragmatic stance towards Russia in recent years as it discovered its own gas reserves and sought cooperation on energy projects. This is why Blair advocated that Russia and the West join forces against 'radical Islam'.

For Blair this blending of tough realpolitik and potential wealth creation through the exploitation of resources is a "progressive" foreign policy. In the short term, there may well be blood and tears, yet in the longer term there is no alternative and wealth and consumerism is the only way to overcome the past.

While Blair is routinely condemned by British politicians for joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 ,his thinking and the role of resources in foreign policy strategy remain close to the way Western politicians still approach geopolitical struggles across the globe. After all, he is Special Envoy for a reason.