[The theft of natural resources all rests on the larger backdrop
of the Zionist settler-colonial project and its function as an
imperialist proxy.]
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GAS, GAZA, AND WESTERN IMPERIALISM  
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Tara Alami
December 20, 2023
Mondoweiss
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_ The theft of natural resources all rests on the larger backdrop of
the Zionist settler-colonial project and its function as an
imperialist proxy. _

Leviathan Offshore Gas Field,

 

The current assault on Gaza cannot be seen as separate from the theft
of resources like fuel and the systemic destruction of
life-sustaining infrastructure
[[link removed]] throughout
Palestine. Only ten days after the beginning of the most recent
assault on Gaza, the World Health Organization announced that fewer
than “24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left
[[link removed]]”
in Gaza. By October 24th and amid brutal bombing, Gaza’s Ministry of
Health warned
[[link removed]] of
an impending fuel shortage that would shut down several hospitals
within 48 hours, including the Beit Lahia Indonesian Hospital. On
November 20, news broke that the U.S. was exploring plans to exploit
the gas fields off the coast of Gaza as part of an “economic
revitalization plan
[[link removed]].”
While some took this to mean that these gas fields were an ulterior
motive for the years of Zionist and U.S.-backed attacks on Gaza, the
current assault should be understood as an escalation of an ongoing
[[link removed]] attempt
[[link removed]] to
ethnically cleanse Gaza that is part and parcel of the Zionist
settler-colonial and imperial project.

THE GAZA MARINE NATURAL GAS FIELD

Besides its long-term goal of building a settler-colonial ethnostate,
the Zionist project sustains itself as an imperialist proxy for the
Western empire in the region. One important way it plays this role is
through its involvement in exporting stolen gas to the European Union
[[link removed]] (EU)
and by striking gas deals with local normalizing neighboring states,
like Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE
[[link removed]]. 

Twenty-five years ago, British Gas Group (BGG) discovered
[[link removed].] natural
gas off the coast of Gaza between the Zionist-occupied
[[link removed]] Leviathan
gas field and the Egyptian Zohr gas field. These fields have become
known at Gaza Marine 1 and Gaza Marine 2, and are a tremendous point
of interest for the Zionist state and its American sponsor, who seek
to profit off of Palestinian natural resources in the Mediterranean
Sea. 

Most of Gaza’s energy and water is controlled by the Israeli
occupation, and plans to introduce and maintain independent
energy-producing infrastructure inside the Strip have continuously
been thwarted by both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Zionist
state. Instead, the Occupation, and to a lesser extent the PA, both
benefit [[link removed]] from stolen gas and
desalinated water from Gaza’s shores while Palestinians in Gaza
endure increasingly catastrophic energy crises.   

Only a few months before October 7, Netanyahu announced approval
[[link removed]] for
the development of this gas field in collaboration with the PA and
Egypt [[link removed]]. Right now, after more
than 20,000 Palestinians had been killed by airstrikes
or execution-style
[[link removed]], 8,000
[[link removed].] reportedly
stuck underneath the rubble, hundreds kidnapped and tortured
[[link removed]], tens of thousands
injured, and a deliberate energy crisis in Gaza designed by the
Zionist state to deplete life-saving infrastructure, energy giant
Chevron resumed gas extraction
[[link removed]] from
the Tamar and Leviathan fields to supply Egypt and Israeli settlers. 

REGIONAL DOMINATION

To understand the Zionist state’s interest in extracting gas from
fields off the coast of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, it’s
essential to situate it within the Israeli occupation’s imperial
aims, solidified in the 1990s by the Oslo Accords
[[link removed]] and,
within them, the Paris Protocol
[[link removed]].

Beyond promoting settlement expansion, the militarization by the
state, and the nullification of the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s grassroots legitimacy,  the Accords effectively
placed Palestinians under complete economic subjugation to the Zionist
regime. The Accords’ division of the occupied West Bank into
arbitrary categories by means of colonial map-making
[[link removed]] additionally
physically restricted Palestinians’ access to life-sustaining
natural resources, and, importantly, paved the way for the comprador
PA regime being “given
[[link removed]]”
access to the Palestinian gas fields off the shore of Gaza and Egypt
while stolen gas is exported abroad. 

Thirty years 
[[link removed]]after
Oslo, Palestinians remain in a state of deliberate underdevelopment
designed to sabotage any potential for economic stability, facilitated
by the PA and its lackeys, and exacerbated by consistent incursions,
invasions, bombings, and colonial violence by the Israeli Occupation
Forces (IOF). 

No place is this more clear than Gaza. Before Hamas was elected by
Palestinians in 2007, “peace” negotiations between then-prime
minister Ehud Olmert and the PA included the Israeli
occupation purchasing $4 billion worth of gas annually
[[link removed]],
starting in 2009. But Hamas’ win in 2007 effectively nullified
potential agreements as a brutal
[[link removed]] air, land, and sea blockade was
placed on Gaza. In the background, the Zionist regime was planning its
impending 2008 invasion of Gaza while simultaneously attempting
[[link removed]] to
reach a 15-year deal with BGG
[[link removed]]. 

Once Egypt signed a gas deal with the Zionist state in 2005
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followed by the discovery of the Tamar gas field in 2009
[[link removed]], the need
to extract and export gas from Gaza’s shores became less urgent. But
as we’re seeing today, the plans to eventually exploit the Gaza
Marine fields while maintaining a medieval siege on Gaza did not halt.

Nor were these plans restricted to Gaza’s shores. 

Lebanon has been embroiled in a dispute with the Israeli occupation
over maritime borders since 2010. In October 2022, a historic
maritime border deal, brokered by the U.S., was finally signed. The
deal effectively places the U.S. as a permanent observer, supervisor,
and mediator of all extractions from gas fields, in addition to
mandating that data of “all currently known, and any later
identified
[[link removed]]”
resources be shared with the U.S.. Further, the deal only allows
“reputable, international corporations
[[link removed]]”
approved and supervised by the U.S. to extract gas from the fields and
restricts Lebanese control over roughly ⅓ of the disputed area.
Lebanon’s concessions are likely due to the country’s increasingly
dire economic conditions, readily exploited by the deal’s American
brokers. 

Similarly, in 2016, Jordan’s National Electric Power company signed
a controversial 15-year normalization deal
[[link removed]] with
the Zionist state and energy corporations Delek Drilling, Ratio, and
Noble Energy. In December 2019, the Zionist state began exporting
stolen gas to Jordan from the Leviathan field. In 2022
[[link removed]],
Jordan’s King Abdullah II met with Isaac Herzog at Egypt’s COP27
summit to sign a memorandum of understanding for a deal exchanging
stolen water from the Mediterranean Sea for Jordanian
solar-power-generated energy. 

CHALLENGING IMPERIALISM 

The case of the Zionist regime’s interest in gas fields surrounding
the borders of Palestine is a textbook example of imperialism as
defined by Lenin
[[link removed]] or
Walter Rodney’s _How Europe Underdeveloped Africa_: namely, the
concentration of production and monopolies (namely by U.S. and
British-affiliated energy corporations) and the export of capital. 

Though attempting to hide this resource theft from Palestinians behind
the smokescreen of “solving” a global energy crisis
[[link removed]] sparked
by NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and the Nord Stream pipeline
explosion
[[link removed]],
the UK, U.S., EU, and the Zionist state have long been interested in
solidifying stolen gas exports from the Leviathan gas field in the
European energy market, beyond the confines of deals with Jordan,
Egypt, and now Lebanon. This is why Yemeni strategic attacks on
shipping routes
[[link removed].] to
and from the Zionist state are a true threat to the viability of this
genocidal regime: if the energy cost of this attack on Gaza is too
high, megacorporations that supply the IOF with energy and weapons
[[link removed]] are
more likely to halt shipments altogether, threatening
[[link removed]] the
global trade economy.

Accompanying every announcement of further theft from Palestinian and
Arab gas fields is an emphasis on the Zionist state’s attempt to
maintain “safety” and “security” around its colonial borders.
The theft of natural resources and the potential profit for the
Zionist regime and its sponsors, including giant energy corporations
like Chevron and Total, is indeed the driving force behind its
insistence on encroaching Gaza’s shore. But, crucially, it all rests
on the larger backdrop of the Zionist settler-colonial project and its
function as an imperialist proxy: ethnic cleansing, land theft,
dispossession, and the structural economic subjugation of
Palestinians. True liberation therefore means the end of the Zionist
project in all its forms, from colonial borders, military checkpoints,
and blockades, to its parasitic reach beneath our waters. 

TARA ALAMI is a Palestinian writer from occupied Jerusalem and
occupied Yafa currently based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). 

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* Gaza
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* zionism
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* imperialism
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* gas
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