Israel as a fossil fuel pusher

This interview with with Guy Laron -- a senior lecturer of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of two books: Origins of the Suez Crisis and The Six-Day War -- comes via economist Adam Tooze. Laron's perspective would explain a lot of what looks like long-term suicidal policy from the Netanyahu government.

Here's Laron:

Netanyahu has long wanted to turn Israel into a resource economy and an energy hub. Ever since the 2010 discovery of enormous gas fields in the territorial waters of Israel—the Tamar gas field (200 billion cubic meters of reserves) and more famously the Leviathan gas field (600 billion cubic meters of reserves). The aim is to supply Europe from these two offshore fields. ...

Becoming a player in the energy market and establishing itself as a transit state is useful for national security as well. That way, Israel could pitch itself to the West as a safety valve: “If something happens to the Suez Canal, we are here.”  

... Until recently, Israel did not allow British Petroleum to develop the Gaza marine gas field. But the pressure to develop the Leviathan and Tamar has increased given European energy needs since the war in Ukraine, when the EU voluntarily cut off Russian oil and gas. In March, Netanyahu gave the final green light after meeting with Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni in Italy to discuss common interests. Italy wants to become the energy junction of Europe, the meeting point of various gas fields from Algeria up to Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt. Netanyahu discussed with Meloni how to connect the Leviathan gas field to Italy via Cyprus partnering with Eni, Italy’s national champion oil & gas firm. 

More and more, much like Putin, Netanyahu feels that the educated middle class that made Israel a powerhouse in high tech and arts is a burden. They were interfering with his quest to create a personalist dictatorship. These are the people he has been trying to drive off with his judicial coup in the last year—he no longer needs them. He’ll have revenue from transit fees, gas exports, and Israel’s military industrial complex. These are the only sectors of the economy he’s focused on.

Oil and gas kleptocracies are instinctively hostile to democracy and international decency. (And almost all fossil fuel economies are kleptocracies.) The 10/7 Hamas massacre both gives Netanyahu cover to let his instincts for murder have full control -- and endangers him as Israeli society turns away from a figure whose negligence made Israelis less secure. 

We don't know how the current Gaza campaign plays out, but if we want less dead Palestinians, we need to have the backs of Israelis who have an interest in an Israel that can imagine some kind of peaceful co-existence.