Turning Palestine's Most Valuable Natural Resource into a Political Tool
A Very Interesting Piece
By ARTHUR NESLEN
CounterPunch
"It's always nice to start a new job with a trick up your sleeve, and the Middle East's new envoy Tony Blair could be forgiven for thinking he has just that. In the near future, a $4bn deal to exploit Gaza's offshore gas reserves will be signed by the Israeli government, Britain's BG Group (BG), the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s investment arm, the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) and Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC). Environmental considerations notwithstanding, an injection of this kind of capital into the occupied territories could transform the political landscape.
By fortune or design, Tony Blair has been crucial to the deal's genesis. But the pressure he has put on other parties to agree a deal that economically ties the PA to Israel has exacerbated Fatah-Hamas tensions, put the PIF on the political defensive, and may even have helped stoke the recent fighting in Gaza.
It was the Gaza-Jericho First agreement in 1994 that first allocated the PA a 20-mile maritime zone off Gaza's coast. But it was not until 1999, the year that BG gained its exploration concession on the field, that Israel agreed to give it to the PA. In exchange, the PA signed away "full security control" of the sea off Gaza to Israel. They probably thought they had got a bargain.....
The PIF maintains that the deal was a purely commercial enterprise. But one informed source told me it was also a "highly political" venture in which Britain's relationship with Israel had been "key". "The UK and US, who are the major players in this deal, see it as a possible tool to improve relations between the PA and Israel," he said. "It is part of the bargaining baggage."......One well-placed Palestinian source told me there was "an obvious linkage" between the BG-Israel deal and attempts to bolster the Olmert-Abbas political process.....
Some reports suggest that up to three-quarters of the $4bn of revenue raised might not even end up in Palestinian hands at all......
Ever sensitive to popular anger at the exploitation of Palestine's national treasure, one of Hamas's first demands after seizing power in Gaza was for a renegotiation of the BG contract. Ziad Thatha, the Hamas economic minister, had previously denounced the deal as "an act of theft" and modern-day Balfour Declaration, that "sells Palestinian gas to the Zionist occupation".....
On April 29, two weeks before fighting flared in Gaza, Yossi Maiman, co-owner of the rival Israeli gas company EMG, claimed that in 2004, while he was in talks to join the project, it was revealed to him that shares in it were being held in trust for two confidential partners: Mohammed Rashid and Martin Schlaff. BG denied the claims but they were damaging......Mohammed Rashid is a former director general of the PIF and erstwhile "mentor" and ally to the now-exiled Gazan warlord Mohammed Dahlan. Conflicts Forum website described Rashid as a sometime advisor to the US and "an essential part of America's programme to undermine Hamas"......
From left to right: The Palestinian Mafiosi Mohammed Rashid, Abbas and Dahlan coordinating with their Israeli military bosses
But a combination of factors--the obsession among Israeli and western leaders with controlling the Palestinian's use of their revenues, the deal's alleged terms, the uncertainty surrounding its beneficiaries, the secrecy with which the whole shebang was negotiated and, critically, the choice of Israel rather than Egypt as a buyer--instead just stirred an already simmering pot......."
No comments:
Post a Comment