Is it wise for Israel to allow development of the Gaza gas field?

On Sunday, the Israeli Prime Minister's office issued a brief statement:

In the framework of the existing efforts between the State of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority (PA), with emphasis on Palestinian economic development and maintaining security stability in the region, it has been decided to develop the Gaza Marine gas field off the coast of Gaza.

Implementing the project is subject to coordination between the security services and direct dialogue with Egypt, in coordination with the PA, and the completion of inter-ministerial staff work led by the National Security Council, in order to maintain the security and diplomatic interests of the State of Israel on the matter.

This is very vague.

In the past, Israel has tied the development of the field off the Gaza coast to returning the Israeli hostages  and recovering the bodies of Israeli soldiers still held by Hamas. 

But it looks like Netanyahu is dropping that condition and playing some word games:

An unnamed Israeli official at the prime minister’s office told Ynet on Sunday that all of the security agencies recommended the government approve the project. The same agencies had also approved the resolution of the maritime border dispute with Lebanon in November 2022, but Netanyahu rejected the recommendation, and the agreement with Lebanon was reached under the previous Bennett-Lapid government. 

“The issue of the [Israeli] prisoners and missing people was and still is a condition for the development of infrastructure in Gaza. In this case [of the Marine field], we are not talking about Gaza infrastructure, but rather about an agreement with the PA and with Egypt," said the official.

Hamas has been pretty much maintaining calm in Gaza since Israel has allowed thousands of Gazans to work in Israel. It seems like Netanyahu (and Israel's security agencies) are looking at Gaza Marine as a means to make life easier for Gazans but Israel could theoretically turn the spigot off in case Hamas decides to resume hostilities.

If that is the logic, there are a couple of flaws. One is that if there is a direct line of natural gas from the field to Gaza, Israel could not turn it off, because that would look clearly like collective punishment. 

The real fear is that the revenues would help fund more Hamas weapons and attacks. This will undoubtedly happen. Is that certainty worth the possibility/probability that Hamas will keep Gaza quiet? 

Which brings up the other problem. While Hamas might be quieter in Gaza, they are active in the West Bank and taking credit for terror attacks. When Abbas is gone, while there is infighting within Fatah to replace him, Hamas is planning to take advantage of the chaos to make its own bid for controlling the West Bank.  And the Gaza money will be critical to that plan succeeding. 

Beyond that, what's wrong with leveraging Gaza Marine to get the hostages back? Why give up a concession and get nothing in return? Why not publicly tell the world, "We are happy to allow Gaza gas to be exported as soon as our boys come home?" Europe needs to replace Russian gas, which is why this has become a hot issue over the past year again.  Why not give them a reason to pressure Hamas?

I hope Bibi knows what he is doing, and that there will be appropriate guardrails on this effort.

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Jabaliya: How The Media Listened To Israel's Side Of The Story And Why (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

In the midst of Operation Breaking Dawn, on Saturday night, at about 9pm, a rocket explosion in Jabaliya in Gaza killed 4 children.

As expected, Israel was blamed.

But this time, unexpectedly, Israel was able not only to present its case that it was not responsible, but also to get the media to present a balanced report that presented Israel's contention that the explosion was the result of a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Israel Gets The Media To Notice

The results were media reports that actually were balanced. The Times of Israel had a survey of some of the reporting:

CNN reported:

In one incident Saturday, four children were among seven people killed in an explosion in Jabaliya. The Palestinian Health Ministry initially said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike. Israel rejected the claim and said it was the result of errant rocket fire, and released a video showing what it said was the Islamic Jihad rocket sharply changing course in the air and hitting the building.

The New York Times referred to the incident twice. First, on Saturday:

Three children were also killed on Saturday, though it was not immediately clear whether they were hit by an Israeli strike or a misfired Palestinian rocket. The Israeli military said they were killed by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch.

Then on Sunday:

Israel said some of those children were killed on Saturday night when an Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and fell short in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said it had not been operating in that area at the time. Islamic Jihad has not commented on the Israeli claim.

France's AFP quoted Israeli sources that  “it had ‘irrefutable’ evidence that a stray rocket fired by Islamic Jihad was responsible for the deaths of several children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday.”

Al Jazeera reported:

At least four children were killed in a blast close to the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, according to Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip. It blamed Israel for the deaths, but the military denied any responsibility, saying the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad. Al Jazeera could not verify the claims immediately.

On Saturday, The Associated Press reported 

The Israeli military said an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants killed civilians late Saturday, including children, in the town of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. The military said it investigated the incident and concluded ‘without a doubt’ that it was caused by a misfire on the part of Islamic Jihad. There was no official Palestinian comment on the incident.

However, by Sunday the AP apparently decided that in the interests of balance, instead of presenting the two sides as to who was responsible, it would not address the question of responsibility at all and merely reported “among the dead were six children and four women” -- without any mention the possibility that some of them may have been killed by misfired PIJ rockets.

On the other hand, is the German news site Bild, whose headline was straightforward without hedging, "Palestinian missile kills civilians in Gaza."

What Did Israel Do Differently This Time?

One of the criticisms of Israel when it comes to getting its side of the story out to the world is that it is just too slow, allowing the terrorists and Israel-haters plenty of time to get their version of things out and presented before the world audience. Israel just does not react quickly enough.

Not this time.

Lahav Harkov addresses this in her article How Israel shot down false reports on Jabaliya explosion. Israel already started responding on the same day -- Saturday.

“We identified the potential for damage from this incident very quickly,” Head of the Public Diplomacy Directorate Lior Haiat said on Sunday. “We understood it could be a public diplomacy catastrophe that could lead to diplomatic harm that could change the direction of the campaign.”

Within minutes, Haiat, IDF Spokesperson Ran Kohav, representatives of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry discussed the incident. Defense officials were quickly able to determine not only that the IDF was not responsible, but that Islamic Jihad very clearly was.

Haiat was able to coordinate a media plan with the others within an hour. [emphasis added]

Here is Israel's statement that came out the very same day, via Twitter:

And that was only the beginning.

The statement was translated into multiple languages and delivered to Israeli embassies worldwide, which then passed the statement on to local media.

The IDF posted a statement as well:

Keren Hajioff, PM Lapid's International Spokeswoman made a video for TV and social media, where she made a similar statement:

Tonight, Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket towards Israeli children, but ended up killing Gazan children instead.

This is the truth about what happened ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/sLVLWlU0tS

— Keren Hajioff (@kerenhajioff) August 6, 2022

Another welcome step, considering Israel's reputation of not dealing well with the media, was Culture and Sports Minister Chilli Tropper being released from an ongoing Security Cabinet meeting so that he could speak to Israeli media on behalf of the government.

Of course, it helped that Israel was able to provide videos to support its claim:

Palestinians accusing Israel of killing 5 kids yet at 20:40 a rocket barrage was reported into Israel. At the same time, the news broke of massacre in Jabaliya in which 5 children were killed. The IDF confirmed NO ATTACKS were carried out in the area at that time by Israel. pic.twitter.com/kIX72TnxR5

— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) August 6, 2022

Now that Israel has demonstrated the ability to get its message across and reported in the media, what Israel needs is the ability to do this consistently.

Maybe it can even do a better job in presenting its side in the death of Abu Akleh.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Yair Lapid's excellent letter to the UN Secretary General points out the hypocrisy of the UN

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrote an excellent letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in response to the statements by one of the members of the Commission of Inquiry, Miloon Kothari, that were antisemitic, claiming that the "Jewish lobby" controlled social media.

Significantly, Lapid's letter does not only call out the antisemitism of that statement. It also points out that Kothari's suggestion that Israel does not belong in the United Nations altogether is also an example of antisemitism - according to the words of Antonio Guterres himself!

But more than that, he points out that the commission itself was biased from the start, and its reaction to this episode only solidifies how biased it is.

As is often the case, the Prime Minister's Office stupidly did not release the letter in a way that is could be easily copied and pasted - it only released a photograph of the letter. This is simply unforgivable. The basics of public relations are ignored and only people who make a great effort to view the letter and quote it can do so.

So I am reproducing it here.

Your Excellency,

I am writing to you to demand the immediate removal of all three members of the COI tasked with investigating Israel, and the disbanding of the Commission. The COI has been fundamentally tainted by the publicly expressed prejudices of its leadership, who do not meet the basic standards of neutrality, independence and impartiality required by the United Nations.

In a recent interview (July 25th), one of the commissioners, Mr. Miloon Kothari, made several outrageous comments, including some which are clearly antisemitic.

During the interview, Mr. Kothari said, “We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by- whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs, a lot of money is being thrown in to try to discredit us.” He further questioned Israel’s right to exist as an equal member of the community of nations, in an unacceptable and cynical attempt to discredit the very legitimacy of the one and only Jewish state. He stated, “I would go as far as to raise the question as why they are even a member of the United Nations.”

These antisemitic remarks are a stain on the entire United Nations and are not befitting of a person with such a position of responsibility. As such, they were firmly condemned by representatives of the United States, France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, the European Union and others.

Instead of taking a moral stance and repudiating these comments, Ms. Navi Pillay, who chairs the COI, chose to defend and excuse them, in a public letter sent to the President of the Human Rights Council on July 28th. She doubled down on the Commission’s support for Mr. Kothari’s comments. Pillay’s claim that the comments were taken out of context are false and were even rejected by the President of the UN Human Rights Council. I urge you to listen to Mr. Kothari’s interview and judge for yourself.

I recall your principled comments at a New York conference in 2017, that “a modern form of antisemitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist.” Furthermore, you pledged to take a stand “in the front line of the struggle against antisemitism, and to make sure the United Nations is able to take all possible actions for antisemitism to be condemned, and if possible, eradicated from the face of the earth.” You stressed that "Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules."

Excellency, I call on you today to honor your word in this egregious case, to set the record straight. This cannot stand. Slurs about a “Jewish lobby” that acts to “control” the media, are reminiscent of the darkest days of modern history.

The fundamentally flawed nature of the COI has been widely discussed, and a group of 22 nations, led by the United States, issued a joint statement during the June HRC session expressing their deep concern about this. This latest shameful episode is a further example of its flawed and biased nature.

The fight against antisemitism cannot be waged with words alone, it requires action. This is the time for action; it is time to disband the Commission. From Mr. Kothari’s outrageous slurs to Ms. Pillay’s defense of the indefensible, this Commission does not just endorse antisemitism — it fuels it.

I therefore ask you to take all necessary measures to bring about the immediate resignation of Ms. Pillay and the other commissioners, and the disbanding of the Commission.

Sincerely,

Yair Lapid

I cannot find the full text of Antonio Gutteres' 2017 speech to the World Jewish Congress where he said  “a modern form of antisemitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist.” Arguably, the more important statement was where he said "Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules." This commission, by its very existence and the fact that it is the only open-ended commission in UN history, violates that rule and is prima facie evidence of the UN's inherent antisemitism. 

Gutteres has also said, “You can be absolutely sure, as secretary-general of the United Nations, I will be in the front line of the struggle against antisemitism, and to make sure the United Nations is able to to take all possible actions for antisemitism to be condemned, and if possible, eradicated from the face of the earth.”

It is past time to turn these words into action.

If the fight against antisemitism is to have any meaning at all, this commission of inquiry must be disbanded. But there is no procedural method to accomplish that - antisemitism is baked into the UN and in its rules allowing something like this to begin with. All we have left is to expose the hypocrisy of a commission that is supposedly meant to advance human rights when the UN's leader has said, explicitly, that "Antisemitism threatens all people’s human rights. It is a menace to democratic values, to social peace and stability. "

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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