Gaza, July 24, (Pal Telegraph) – Since British Gas (BG) first discovered huge offshore reserves of natural gas in Gazan waters Israel has attempted to dictate and secure the future of these reserves.At one stage they almost signed up for the entire reserve but then political change took place in Gaza when Hamas came to power. This was a severe blow to the Israeli Government which had by now established a war footing.This was confirmed back in 2007 when Lt-Gen. (ret) Moshe Yaalon published an article in the Jewish Center for Public Affairs (Vol 7, No 17 19 October 2007) titled: Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security? It was in this article that he quoted the following: “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”.
After exhaustive talks with BG the Israelis started to lose ground and realised that these huge reserves of gas could disappear from their grasp and be piped to Egypt for conversion to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) for export to the UK/USA. In January of 2008 BG had given up all hope of negotiating a deal and closed down their offices in Israel.
By mid 2008 Israel had already started up talks to create a cease fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. What was ironic was the fact that during this same time Israel was planning a strike on Gaza. It was at this stage that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair came on the scene and asked the Israeli Government to urgently re- commence talks on the gas issue (despite a deal that had already been struck with the Egyptians).
