Jim Lobe reports at InterPress on another provocation from Israel, in league with American rightwingers. One of the investors in this drilling project, Michael Steinhardt, has denied that there is an occupation, denied there is a Palestinian people. And the company is headed by Effi Eitam, a hawkish former Israeli Cabinet minister. Lobe:
In a potential new source of contention between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has reportedly granted a U.S. energy firm with heavyweight political connections to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights.
The company is a local subsidiary of New Jersey-based Genie Energy Ltd. The Strategic Advisory Board of another subsidiary, Genie Oil and Gas, includes former Vice President Dick Cheney, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and former Republican Rep. Jim Courter.
It also includes several prominent investment managers, such as Jacob Rothschild, chairman of the J. Rothschild group, and Michael Steinhardt, a major contributor to Jewish and Zionist causes, notably Birthright Israel, a multi-million-dollar programme to bring young Diaspora Jews to Israel….
The granting of the licence by Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, which was initially reported by Dow Jones Thursday, comes amidst continuing civil war in Syria, which has demanded the return of the Heights since Israel took them in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
It also comes a month before Obama is scheduled to make his first visit to Israel as president.
Some analysts here compared the move to previous announcements by the Netanyahu government of new settlement construction on the West Bank or East Jerusalem — either on the eve of or during meetings with top U.S. officials – that have clearly contributed to thinly veiled tensions that exist between the two leaders.
The administration remained tight-lipped about the move Friday, confining itself only to issuing a terse statement by the State Department acknowledging the press reports about the licence.
“We intend to discuss this issue with the Israeli Government,” it said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of Netanyahu’s plan to put additional pressure on the U.S., as he’s done with President Obama in the past,” Charles Ebinger, an energy and Middle expert at the Brookings Institutions, told IPS. “He keeps changing the facts on the ground through expansion of settlements and now this on the Golan.
More on Eitam: He has called Arabs in Israel and the West Bank a ticking time bomb and anticipated a regional war in which Israel is compelled to expel Palestinians to the east side of the Jordan River. He also doesn’t believe in an occupation. Disturbing.
what defiance. obama won’t say a word.
From Craig Murray t’other day:
http://www.craigmurray.org/archives/2013/02/israel-grants-oil-rights-in-syria-to-murdoch-and-rothschild/
“For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.
Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria.”
“In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.”
from the last link:
this is from 2002, he’s a quack nutjob.
“More on Eitam (thanks to Annie Robbins): He has called Arabs in Israel and the West Bank a ticking time bomb and anticipated a regional war in which Israel is compelled to expel Palestinians to the east side of the Jordan River. ”
Add this, which has already been very widely publicized:
“Eitam told me that he believes there are innocent men among the Palestinians, but that they are collectively guilty. “We will have to kill them all,” he said.”
http://www.jeffreygoldberg.net/articles/tny/a_reporter_at_large_among_the.php
http://electronicintifada.net/content/we-will-have-kill-them-all-effie-eitam-thug-messiah/8555
Hard to imagine anyone missing him if he came to grief.
Zionists are sneaky and calculating this way. Nothing like this is done in “broad daylight”. They’re trying to capitalize on the present miseries of Syrians created by outsiders and the fact that Assad is embroiled in a civil war to once again STEAL what isn’t theirs and CLEARLY belongs to Syrians. They have decades of experience capitalizing on misery to rob others of the little they have.