Keith_McClary wrote:The End Game Scenario
Gaza: Is Annexation Israel’s ‘Permanent Solution’?In fact it’s the gas
Now consider another dimension to the issue, already written about in The Ecologist: Gaza is valuable property thanks to its enormous resources of natural gas.
When originally discovered in 2000, Gaza’s ofshore 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves were valued at $4 billion. Since then the Gaza Marine reserve has been re-estimated to 1.6 trillion cubic feet, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), while”offshore Gaza territory may hold additional energy resources.”
Israel is approaching a severe domestic ‘gas crunch’ pending the development of its own deep-water Leviathan gas field. Moreover it is now estimated that Gaza Marine’s exploitation could yield revenues of $6-7 billion per year.
And one thing is clear – Israel has no intention of letting Hamas anywhere near that money – nor even Fatah, which runs the West Bank, on any terms other than those that Israel lays down. In 2007 Moshe Ya’alon, a former IDF chief of staff, stated:
“It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”
And needless to say, that would be entirely unacceptable.
Well the Israelis certainly won't let Hamas get four billion a year to buy rockets with.