To what extent is the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip intertwined with the region’s oil and gas resources? Since the year 2000, upon the discovery of gas fields in Gaza, the Israeli government has obstructed the Palestinian people and their representatives from harnessing the advantages of their natural resources. Let’s look at the facts.

The awareness and potential of Gaza’s gas fields have been prevalent since their initial discovery in 2000. Former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat esteemed them as a divine gift. Nevertheless, Gaza has remained unable to profit from its natural gas fields, notably identified as the Gaza Marine.

In recent years, discussions have persisted among Israeli stakeholders, Egyptian firms, and the Palestinian Authority regarding the utilization of gas resources off the coast of the Gaza Strip and the method of tapping into this substantial wealth. However, somewhat obscured from public knowledge is the reality that during Israel’s initiation of conflict with Gaza in 2008, extending into 2009, Israel exploited that period to essentially seize control of the Gaza Marine, preventing its development by the Palestinian people. This occurred despite the fact that it fell under the jurisdiction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as stipulated in the Oslo Accords, thereby securing its status as an exclusive Palestinian economic zone.

In recent historical context, Hezbollah, the armed faction safeguarding Lebanese territory, resorted to threatening war with Israel and targeting its gas fields unless Israel ceded rights to the segments of these fields situated in Lebanese territorial waters to the Lebanese government. Succumbing to Hezbollah’s pressure, the Israeli government reluctantly relented and signed an agreement permitting the Lebanese populace to exploit their natural resources peacefully. Notably, throughout this crisis, the rights of Gazans over their gas fields were never disputed.

Following Hezbollah and Lebanon’s success in reclaiming sovereignty over their natural resources, Hamas initiated a similar endeavor. It issued a warning to Israel, asserting retaliation if Israel attempted to appropriate Gaza’s resources. Subsequently, substantial negotiations between the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and Hamas ensued, culminating in Hamas’s consent last June to allow the development of the Gaza Marine contingent upon receiving a share of the gas field revenue.

After the October 7 Hamas attack, Israel found itself compelled to close down its primary gas field, the Tamar Field, which constitutes the majority of its gas production. Grappling with the economic ramifications of this closure, Israel opted to issue new licenses to diverse energy companies to fortify its position and reassure oil companies about the economic potential of developing Israeli gas.

Since 2000, Israel has obstructed the Palestinian people from benefiting from their gas fields, which, by international law and the agreements endorsed by Israel, rightfully belong to the Palestinian population. Presently, the sole impediment for Israel is Hamas. Eliminating Hamas would ostensibly enable Israel to exert unchallenged control over Gaza’s gas resources.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

The post Israel’s Decades Old Plan to Exploit Gaza the Gas Fields of Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.

“Once we count psychic harm, it looks like Israel’s war might be proportional. But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid,” which could be the case “if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution.”

In the following guest post, Alec Walen, professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers University, discusses the significance of psychic harm—primarily the psychic harm of living in terror—for an adequate moral assessment of the Israel-Hamas conflict and for an understanding of what Israel should do in Gaza.

It is part of the ongoing series, “Philosophers On the Israel-Hamas Conflict“.

[Käthe Kollwitz, “The Mothers”]

Proportionality, Psychic Harm, and the Day After
by Alec Walen

As I write this, there is a pause in the fighting in Gaza, and it is not clear whether Israel will resume its efforts to depose Hamas. But it seems likely that it will. Thus, I want to address the question: Can it wage war to depose Hamas without causing disproportionate harm? By appealing to the idea of psychic harm, I want to argue that the answer is: Maybe. But of course, there is psychic harm on both sides, and for Israel’s war to avoid causing disproportionate damage, it will have to take proactive measures to ensure that the psychic harm in Gaza is minimized if and when it topples Hamas.

To be clear, I am discussing proportionality ad bellum, not in bello. I have no doubt that some of the innocent civilians Israel has killed in Gaza were killed in disproportionate attacks. Such attacks are to be condemned. But my concern is with the war as whole. Even if disproportionate attacks were the exception so far—a topic on which I remain agnostic for now—and even if Israel exercises maximal care for noncombatants from this point forward, we need to know if the overall amount of harm Israel would cause in deposing Hamas is proportionate to the good that would result from doing so.

If we count just the death toll on both sides, then I think Victor Tadros was right when he wrote in an earlier post that Israel’s “response is … already disproportionate.” On the one hand, if Hamas is left in power in Gaza, it would almost certainly regroup, rearm, and strike again. It might even be able to strike with a more deadly attack next time. But short of acquiring a nuclear weapon—which one assumes it would not want to use in land it wants to occupy—it is hard to see how it could cause more than a few thousand deaths in the foreseeable future. By contrast, Israel has already caused over 12,000 deaths in Gaza, most of whom, it seems fair to assume, are non-combatants. And if it continues until Hamas is fully removed from power in Gaza, it will have to kill thousands more. In addition, the toll of thirst, hunger, stress, displacement, poverty, and disease will surely kill multiples more. Suppose a reasonable estimate of the total death toll is approximately 30,000. Saving a few thousand lives from a potential attack cannot justify so many deaths. Deaths to deaths, Israel’s war is grotesquely disproportionate.

But deaths are not all that matter. Psychic harm matters too. Hamas has shown that it is undeterrable. Thus, if Hamas remains in power, it seems likely that it is only a matter of time until it attacks again. Living with that terror is a significant tax on the souls of Israelis, and this should count in the proportionality balance. Of course, as already noted, the psychic harm on Gazans should count too. But I want to start with the Israeli appeal to psychic harm to show how it could make the war proportional.

The thesis that more abstract harms can be relevant to proportionality was the subject of work by Thomas Hurka in 2005, and by David Rodin, Cecile Fabre, and Jeff McMahan in a collection published in 2014. The focus of these discussions was the possibility of invasions that did not impose concrete harms like death, torture, and rape, but more abstract harms like taking territory or undermining sovereignty. The latter three philosophers were more skeptical than Hurka of the idea that the prevention of such abstract harms could justify killing. But even if they are correct, I think there’s an important middle position between killing, raping, and torturing, on the one hand, and interfering with territory and self-governance, on the other. And I think living in a protracted, well-grounded state of fear that one or the people that one cares about will be killed in an attack counts for that middle state. The fear need not be that one will likely be killed. The fear need only be a source of ongoing significant trauma, based in the thought that a substantial group of people just a few miles away are plotting and building the capacity to carry out a brutal attack that could target anyone in the country and that will likely kill thousands.

Of course, one person cannot justifiably kill another as collateral damage to prevent herself from having to live in a state of traumatizing fear. But I think numbers matter when the harms are close enough in magnitude to be “relevant.” Indeed, I think that if we look into why preventing torture and rape count as reasonable bases for using lethal force, we see that it’s not just the momentary horrible experience and violation that matter; it’s the ongoing psychological damage such experiences impose on people. This sort of trauma can add up so that if enough people face it, then it will be proportional to cause a lesser number of deaths to innocent people if that is an unavoidable side-effect of preventing that amount of serious psychological harm.

Could this apply to make Israel’s war on Hamas proportional? There are roughly seven million Jews living in Israel now most of whom seem to feel—based on my own informal discussions with Israelis—that living with Hamas operating on its border is “intolerable.” I interpret that to mean that the sense of insecurity it induces in them gives them a good reason to wage war on Hamas, aiming to depose it. To take that idea seriously, we have to suppose that they think that avoiding that insecurity is important enough to justify causing the collateral damage that will come from deposing Hamas. If we assume that will be around 30,000 deaths, then the implicit ratio the Israelis are invoking is something like one collateral death for every 200 Israelis who would otherwise live in a state of profound insecurity. That number needs to be adjusted, however, for those Gazans who will necessarily, no matter how the war ends, carry a similar, if not greater, psychic burden because of the war. Those who lost loved ones in the war presumably fit this description. Let us assume ten Palestinians will carry that burden for every Palestinian who is killed. Let us add to that the number who are injured and who will carry that burden for the rest of their lives. Suppose that number is five times higher than the number killed. If we add those numbers together, we get about half a million. If we offset the number of Israelis with a claim to avoid a psychic burden by that number, the number of Israelis whose psychic burden counts will still be close to six million. The ratio would still be something like one collateral death for every 200 or so Israelis who would otherwise live in a state of profound insecurity. I find that I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance. In other words, once we count psychic harm, it looks like Israel’s war might be proportional.

But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional.

There is a possible response to this objection, but before getting to it, I want to address two objections to the idea that Israel can cite the psychic harm from the threat of Hamas on its side of the balance.

One objection to this argument is that to live in Israel is to live with such threats. Hamas is not the only threat. Hezbollah too would like to wipe Israel from the map. So would various other groups, including the Iranian regime. Israel cannot possibly eliminate these threats, so it should not be allowed to cite the extra threat from Hamas as a reason to kill Gazans.

To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse. For an analogy, consider the difference between living in a city with an ex who you know wants to hurt you, but who you think is also deterred by the threat of criminal punishment from doing anything crazy, and living in a city with an ex who you know is so committed to doing you harm that no threat of punishment will deter him. The other powers all seem, so far at least, deterred by the power of Israel (backed up by the U.S.). For Hamas, this is not the case.

Another objection is that there is no need to get to the issue of proportionality because the necessity condition is not met. It is not met because there are less harmful ways to reduce the terror from Hamas. It can either be degraded or contained.

The response to this objection is that it seems false. Israel has degraded Hamas, killing or imprisoning its fighters or leaders before, and it has come back stronger. And it has tried containing it too. It has had a blockade in place since 2007, aimed at preventing Hamas from arming itself; the attack of Oct. 7 showed that the blockade failed. And even if better border security might have contained that attack, making this war unnecessary, Hamas can learn from past mistakes and find new ways to attack. It is not unreasonable to think that Hamas must be deposed for Israel to prevent it from attacking again.

So let us return to the issue of the psychic harm the Israelis are causing by waging this war. How could the misery the war is inflicting on Gazans not fully offset the psychic gains for the Israelis? The answer is that it could count for less if, for most Gazans, it is much more short-lived psychic pain than that which the Israelis would otherwise suffer. But the only way for it to be much more short-lived is if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution. The alternative, in which Israel simply goes back to occupying Gaza, imposing daily humiliations on the Palestinians, would leave the Gazans with at least as much psychic burden as that which the Israelis seem to want to cite to justify their war.

The current Israeli government, stocked with genocidal extremists, could not possibly offer the Palestinians a reasonable two-state solution. But Netanyahu is now deeply unpopular in Israel. If, the day after the war, Israel can rid itself of this government and install a better one, one that is committed to respecting the lives and psychic needs of Palestinians as well as Israelis, it may be able to salvage the justifiability of this war (at least in terms of proportionality).

No reasonable person thinks a two-state solution will be easy to achieve. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli public seems to be in favor of it. Hamas is now more popular than ever among the Palestinians, because it fights for their dignity. And while some Israeli governments in the past have proposed a two-state solution, it seems that they never had a popular mandate to do so. But war can change things, making viable options that were once impossible. Israeli citizens should seize this opportunity to change course and make good faith efforts to establish a two-state solution, and outside powers that have some influence in the region should do what they can to pressure Israel to pursue that path towards peace. If it does, it may find Palestinian partners. But if does not, then it deserves condemnation for waging a disproportionate war.

COMMENTS POLICY

The post Proportionality, Psychic Harm, and the Day After (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

Did you know an international conference was held in France on November 9 under the title ‘International Humanitarian Conference for Gaza’s Civilian Population’?

According to the French foreign ministry website, the conference “involved states, main donors, international organizations and NGOs active in Gaza” to promote “compliance with international humanitarian law, the protection of civilians and humanitarian staff, and the strengthening of humanitarian access.”

If you did not know, we do not blame you. The conference, after all, was meant to distract from the Israeli genocide in Gaza by giving the impression that Western governments still have the political power to control or, at least, influence the future of Gaza.

As French President Emmanuel Macron was preaching about international and humanitarian laws, we were busy looking elsewhere.

Backed by unhinged US administration and corporate media since October 7, Israel has also wanted us to look their way.

To ensure our gaze remained fixated on Tel Aviv’s political priorities, they fabricated an unprecedented amount of lies; those lies, with time, proved to be part of a centralized Israeli propaganda campaign aimed at lessening the impact of Israel’s military defeat on the collective Israeli psyche.

Additionally, Israel’s hasbara masters wanted to keep feeding already biased Western media with all the needed negative content to wage a defamation war against Palestinians, Gaza and its Resistance.

Not only did Israeli hasbara backfire, but it also showed how low Israel is willing to sink to distract from its genocide in Gaza. By feeding into an existing racist narrative in mainstream media about the supposed savagery and the barbarity of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Israel wanted to pose as the protector of Western civilization and democracy.

This false construct, with time, began falling apart and again, we looked elsewhere in our search for answers. We looked at Gaza itself, at the atrocities committed by Israel at every hospital, school and neighborhood.

We looked at the lifeless bodies of hundreds, in fact thousands, of Palestinian children, women and civilians, strewn in every street corner, under rubble, even on their hospital beds.

We looked at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, Al-Fakhoura School and Nuseirat Refugee camp, Al-Fallujah, Jabaliya, Khan Yunis and every inch of Gaza that has been bombed, at times repeatedly, since October 7.

The Palestinians themselves were pointing us to where we should be looking – in fact, to where we should have always been looking.

Relentlessly and with unweakened resolve, ordinary people, often weeping, would point at mass graves, at their dead children in their arms, at mutilated bodies of children in hospital morgues, in parking lots, in the streets. They would say, “Look,” “Look what Israel is doing to us,” “Look what the Nazis have done to our children”, and so on.

The word ‘look’ here is critical. When they say ‘look,’ they mean look, understand, help, do something, anything.

But Palestinian Resistance on the ground, the only actual defenders of those civilians, however uncomfortable this realization makes some of us feel, was also telling us to look, and we did.

In this case, they did not announce ‘Look’ or ‘Shufu’ out loud. Instead, they used a small, red triangle, the symbolism of which is likely to influence a generation of Palestinians and millions of youth around the world.

Israel's biggest fear pic.twitter.com/Nafk0d5M7h

— ONE (@One_Dawah) November 8, 2023

This small, red triangle started as a functional tool in well-produced videos released by the Al-Qassam Brigades, urging us to focus on a specific point in the videos documenting their daily operations against invading Israeli forces.

A small, red triangle would finally appear within this obvious context amid massive ruins, half-standing buildings, dust and smoke. To understand the function of this triangle, we need to understand the story behind it, thus explaining, without a single word, why Palestinians resist.

Red triangles frame a map of Palestine on the front page of a special edition of the Iranian newspaper, Vatan Today

The equation then becomes simple to understand: Israeli destruction, red triangle, explosion – followed by triumphant shouts of ‘God is great,’ ‘Palestine will be free,’ and ‘The invaders will be defeated.’

With time, the functionality of the red triangle was transformed into even more significant meaning and more profound symbolism.

As millions of people continued to protest Israeli atrocities in Gaza, many carried banners and flags of the Red Triangle. For them, this symbol represented more than Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and the need for action everywhere else.

Some suggested that the symbolism of the red triangle was inspired by the red triangle of the Palestinian flag, thus arguing that that specific symbol was chosen to purposely delineate a more significant national symbol.

You may have seen this red triangle facing downwards on your feed recently, posted by pro-Palestinian accounts. What does it mean?

The red triangle first appeared in the videos published by the Al-Qassam Brigades to identify enemy targets. The videos, edited with flashy graphics… pic.twitter.com/OderWLuIMk

— red. (@redstreamnet) November 15, 2023

In truth, the origins of the small, red triangle do not matter. Maybe it was intended to represent something, or it was simply a technical choice made by a young Palestinian tech-savvy fighter to let us know where we needed to look.

What truly matters, however, are the deeper meanings of all of this.

For years – in fact, decades – Palestinians have been urging us to look at their lives under Israeli occupation and apartheid, at the destruction of their homes and orchards, confiscated or stolen by the Israeli military and illegal Jewish settlers, at the fate of their prisoners, thousands of them, languishing in Israeli prisons, simply for resisting the Israeli military occupation; at the Israeli siege on Gaza, and that perpetual episode of suffering and pain, which deprived over two million people of their most basic rights; and at so much more.

Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, many of us did not look.

Thanks to the courage of the Palestinians themselves and to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, we are finally looking, and we are looking precisely where Palestinians want us to look.

US President Joe Biden could now say whatever he wants in defense of Israel; Macron could hold ten more conferences and pretend to speak on behalf of the international community regarding the Gaza holocaust; and Israel could fabricate a million more lies. But we refuse to look at any of them. We refuse to engage with any of them. Their words, actions or inaction are no longer a priority for us.

Only the Palestinian political discourse matters. Only Palestinian freedom is a priority. Only the Palestinian Resistance can push back the Israeli invaders. In short, the priorities of the oppressed, not the oppressor, should matter to all of us.

Indeed, it is time for the Palestinian voice to reclaim its centrality in the story of oppression and Resistance. So, from now on, please look, listen and act in whichever capacity possible. And if you ever struggle to decipher the difference between Palestinian priorities and all others, look for that small, red triangle. It will guide you.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

The post Gaza’s Call to the World: Unveiling the Silent Message of the Red Triangle appeared first on MintPress News.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://medium.com/media/a886e4156173edf6dc81234c91c48a83/href

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If you’re just tuning in, Israeli intelligence ignored mountains of information that the October 7 attack was coming and left Israelis completely undefended, then the IDF killed significant numbers of Israelis with indiscriminate fire and pinned the blame for 100% of Israeli deaths on Hamas, and all those deaths are now being used as justification to push Gazans off their land to the south and shoot them if they try to return while Israeli officials keep talking about how great it would be to get all Palestinians out of all of Gaza.

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Such a crazy coincidence how every single step of Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza has looked exactly the same as what you’d expect to see if Israel was trying to permanently drive Palestinians off a large stretch of Palestinian land.

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This isn’t a war against Hamas. It’s not a war at all. It’s a military operation to facilitate an ethnic cleansing.

Hamas isn’t the target, it’s the excuse.

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Israel isn’t bombing Gaza with the intention of wiping out Hamas, Israel is bombing Gaza with the intention of wiping out Gaza.

Read Let This Radicalize You on Twitter: "This is Gaza. And this is why any honest person can't really say that Israel is just targeting Hamas. pic.twitter.com/ExGd0TfTwa / Twitter"

This is Gaza. And this is why any honest person can't really say that Israel is just targeting Hamas. pic.twitter.com/ExGd0TfTwa

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A new Guardian article says “Israel’s military estimates it has killed between 1,000 and 2,000 Hamas fighters out of a military force it believes is about 30,000 strong.”

If Hamas was using “human shields” as we’ve been told, killing civilians should also yield a huge Hamas fatality rate, since Hamas would be hiding among civilians. Yet the IDF has managed to kill massive numbers of civilians while barely touching Hamas. Maybe they’re just lying about human shields?

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The whole argument for displacing Gazans from the north to the south was to protect their lives, yet now if they try to return to the north they get shot and killed by Israeli forces. What’s the new argument for this one? Are they killing them to save their lives?

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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Find someone who loves you the way Israelis love murdering hospital patients and children. https://t.co/dHA2GQysRp / Twitter"

Find someone who loves you the way Israelis love murdering hospital patients and children. https://t.co/dHA2GQysRp

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Saying Gaza isn’t occupied because Israel “withdrew” in 2005 is the same as saying a prisoner is free because the warden isn’t technically inside his jail cell with him.

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Whenever I say Israel is deliberately killing civilians, half the Israel apologists in my comments are like “NO THEY’RE NOT YOU DAMN LIAR” and the other half are “Yes they are and it’s good.”

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Tell an Israel supporter that Israel is a racist apartheid state and they’ll deny it. Point to the tiered social system and the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and they’ll tell you it’s because Palestinians are all apelike savages who can’t behave themselves.

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Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Ukrainian Official Confirms Russia Was Ready to End War in March 2022 If Kyiv Agreed to Neutralityby Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #diplomacy #UkraineWar https://t.co/8k1QWiZn17 pic.twitter.com/Ph8LuqEjOU / Twitter"

Ukrainian Official Confirms Russia Was Ready to End War in March 2022 If Kyiv Agreed to Neutralityby Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #diplomacy #UkraineWar https://t.co/8k1QWiZn17 pic.twitter.com/Ph8LuqEjOU

In non-Gaza-related news, the leader of President Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament has officially confirmed what many of us have been slandered and smeared for saying for months: that there was a peace deal in the works in the early days of the war in Ukraine if Kyiv would just commit to Ukrainian neutrality, but the deal was abandoned under pressure from western powers.

If you’re ever accused of being a Russian propagandist for pointing out obvious evidence of western malfeasance in Ukraine, don’t worry, wait long enough and a Ukrainian official will eventually come out and prove you right by saying exactly what you said.

And now Washington is starting to push Kyiv to negotiate an end to the fighting while Ukraine’s commander-in-chief calls the war a “stalemate”. Ukraine will surely wind up having to relinquish a lot more than it otherwise would have if it had been allowed to take the peace deal offered at the beginning of the conflict.

All that death and destruction, for what? For nothing. It was all pointless. An entire generation of young men thrown into the war machine in pointless bloodshed which could have been easily avoided except for the US empire’s desire to “bleed Russia” and advance its geostrategic objectives in Europe and Asia.

From Ukraine to Gaza, the US imperial war machine makes everything worse.

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Featured image via Gaza Palestine (Public Domain)