The sinister truth behind Israel’s naval blockade

On Saturday, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. A few days before, Israeli naval boats shot at fisherman at another part of Gaza’s coast. In Gaza, Israeli restrictions have confined Gazan fishermen to fish within 3 nautical miles and even when operating in this tiny stretch of water, they are frequently arrested, injured, sometimes killed, by Israeli fire.

Al-Haq’s latest report questions the security narrative that is continuously put forward as justification for the targeting of Gaza’s fishermen. According to “Annexing Energy: Exploiting and Preventing the Development of Oil and Gas in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, Israel’s use of force to unilaterally restrict maritime access is something much more sinister than self-defence. Rather, Israel’s use of force aims to ensure Palestinians cannot develop their natural resources while simultaneously protecting Israel’s exploitation of them.

In 1999, gas deposits were discovered off the coast of Palestine and leased by the Palestinian Authority for development to the British Gas Group (BG). After receiving security clearance from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, BG drilled two wells in the area and found substantial reserves estimated at 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at $4 billion. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stood on a fishing boat circling the offshore exploration platform as a huge flame of the gas shot into the air. He declared it was “a gift from God to us, to our people, to our children. This will provide a solid foundation for our economy, for establishing an independent state with holy Jerusalem as its capital.”

But Palestine has not been able to capitalize on the find. Israel blocked the development of a pipeline at the political level, killing off the potential of an export market for the gas, and former PM Arial Sharon blocked a government proposal which would facilitate the purchase of Gaza gas by Israel itself. Years of negotiations eventually collapsed and the Palestinians have still not been able to tap into the valuable resource.

Israel also discovered vast natural gas resources. The Mari-B gas field is Israel’s oldest but most important gas field. According to Al-Haq’s report, since 2000, coincidentally the same time Mari-B was discovered, Israel’s navy has forcibly restricted Palestinian access to Gaza’s maritime space to a 6 nautical mile (nm) limit from the 20 nm agreed under the Oslo Accords. This has, according to the report, created a 7 nm illegal security zone around Mari-B gas field- under international law the maximum safety zone permitted around oil and gas platforms outside the territorial sea (which Mari-B is) is a radius of 500 meters.

Al-Haq’s report argues that it is the military security of the El-Arish pipeline which actually “lies at the heart” of Israel’s reasons for maintaining the naval closure. In 2005, Israel and Egypt signed a Memorandum of Understanding which mapped out a plan for the sale and transmission of natural gas through a pipeline. The result of this agreement was the El-Arish pipeline which, completed in 2008, is a 100 km, $550 million submarine gas pipeline that connects El-Arish in Egypt and Ashkelon in Israel.

The report cites the pipeline as the driving factor behind Israel’s 2008-2009 lethal assault on the Gaza Strip, “Operation Cast Lead”. By February 2008, operational trials of gas transmission via the pipeline began. By August 2008, Israel placed major fishing restrictions on Palestinian waters off Gaza and in December 2008 Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, an operation which, according to Al-Haq, was a “pretext for the imposition of a naval blockade on the entire Gaza maritime zone”.The naval closure was introduced on the day Israeli troops begun a ground invasion and remained in place once the troops had left. As such, it created a “military corridor around the El-Arish pipeline, which was destined to start operating at full capacity that year to export gas to the Israeli market.”

During the operation, Israel targeted vital energy infrastructure- a recurring feature in all the wars on the Gaza Strip. In Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Gaza’s Power Plant was attacked on five separate occasions. Such attacks allow Israel to “maintain ultimate control over energy supplies to the occupied Palestinian population”.

This leaves Palestinians in a state of energy dependency, a very lucrative situation for Israel. In the West Bank, this process started following the creation of illegal Israeli settlement Kiryat Arab on the outskirts of Hebron. Military orders conferred powers for the generation, supply and sale of electricity to the Israeli Civil Administration which in turn authorized the IEC to supply and sell electricity to the Hebron municipality.

Today, the IEC owns the electrical grid in the West Bank and supplies 95 percent of the West Bank’s electricity to three electricity distribution companies. Two thirds of the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip (120 MW) originates from Israel through electricity feeder lines. Right now, according to Palestine’s Minister of Economy, the energy bill constitutes the highest contributor to Palestine’s trade deficit with Israel. Al-Haq believes that should gas be supplied from the Gaza Strip to power electricity stations in the West Bank, Palestinians could become economically self-sufficient.

The gas reserves off the Gaza shore are just one of the cases of Israeli exploitation of Palestinian natural resources that Al-Haq’s report highlights. There is also Israel’s illegal appropriation of Palestinian village land containing oil deposits, for example. On an everyday basis, Israel ensures the Palestinian people are deeply energy dependent, a costly subjugation for Palestine- Israel controls Palestinian revenues, profiting substantially from customs collected on international imports of oil, gas, petroleum and fuel. The aim is always the same; to ensure that the dream of a independent Palestinian state can not be realised while profiting from its destruction.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.