US President Donald Trump is hell-bent on “taking” Gaza Strip. In his latest meeting with Jordan’s King Abdulla II, Trump cited the “US authority” to claim the coastal enclave. He said the Washington is “going to run it (Gaza) very properly”. He was reiterating his call to forcibly displace – or the ethnic cleansing of – more than 2 million Palestinians from their land, saying that Jordan and Egypt will take them.
At first he said he would buy Gaza, and will turn the war-ravaged enclave into a “Riviera of the Middle East”. After his meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said Israel will “turn over” Gaza to US. Now he says that US will “have it”, and does not need to “buy it” from anybody.
“We’re going to have it, we’re going to keep it, and we’re going to make sure that there’s going to be peace and there’s not going to be any problem, and nobody’s going to question it, and we’re going to run it very properly,” Trump told reporters.
Following his meeting with King Abdulla II, the Republican said, “We’re not gonna have to buy … we’re gonna have Gaza, we don’t have to buy, there’s nothing to buy…It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it, we’re going to get it going eventually, where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East. It’s going to be for the people in the Middle East, but I think it could be a diamond”.
While Jordan has earlier denied it, saying that Amman strongly condemn the forced displacement of the Palestinians, and is not ready to take any as refugees, things took a different turn after Abdulla met with Trump. While Jordan reportedly took less than 20 children from Gaza who were in dire need of medical care during the 15 months of brutal war, the King said the country will take in 2,000 sick children from Gaza for treatment. He made the remarks during his meeting with Trump.
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The Jordan monarch is the first Arab leader to meet with Trump after his call to take over Gaza. He is now being heavily trolled on social media platform for “bending forward and backward”, and “licking shoes” – as the social media comments suggest.
But why is Trump so much invested in Gaza, the piece of land, 80 percentage of which are reduced to rubbles, and would take more than two decades to clear it out?
Why Gaza
Gaza is more than a beautiful coastal enclave, nestled near the mediterranean sea. The Strip has always been politically fierce, and its history is tumultuous. But beyond the brave and steadfastness of it, Gaza is a diamond, like Trump has mentioned it. While the land is just 365 square kilometers, Gaza hides abundance of oil. Gaza Marine is the catch.
Reportedly, Gaza’s natural gas reserves are estimated to be 122 trillion cubic feet, an estimated net value of $453 billion. The Strip have 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil which is estimated to be of about $71 billion.
“Gaza is floating on oil”.
Gaza Marine came under the radar of the “colonialists”‘ eyes in 1999, when the British Gas Group (BG) began exploration in a wide gas field area located 17 to 21 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza. The area is known as Gaza Marine. The field came under the boundaries of the 20-mile control granted to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the 1995 Oslo II Agreement.
Reportedly, then PA leader Yasser Arafat signed a 25-year exploration license contract with a consortium consisting of Consolidated Contractors Limited (CCC), the British Gas Group (BG), and the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF). A year later, in 2000, BG discovered two fields with reserves totalling 1.4 trillion cubic feet in Gaza Marine, according to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 2019 report. The figures do not include the potential oil reserves under Palestine.
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As per the report, the Levant Basin, which lies in the Mediterranean Sea, is estimated to have some 1.7 billion barrels of oil while over 1.5 billion barrels are estimated to lie beneath the occupied West Bank.
US made its intrusion to West Asia in 1920. By the 1970s, one third of US’ oil consumption came from West Asia.
However, the Palestinians cannot drill for their oil and gas reserves, under the Israeli occupation. While Washington reportedly pushed Israel to allow Palestinians to profit and build an independent energy system from offshore gas post-war, under Israeli occupation, Palestinians cannot drill for oil and gas. The Palestinians are also not allowed to built solar energy.
“The Marine 1 and Marine 2 reserves were discovered in 1999, and BGG began drilling for gas in 2000. Palestinians could have hypothetically monetised these fields and invested the net value of $4.592 billion for 18 years now. Assuming a low annual real rate of return of 2.5 per cent, Palestinians have already lost roughly $2.570 billion through prevention of the exercise of their right to benefit from the exploitation of their natural resources, guaranteed under international law”, stated UNCTAD’s 2019 report.
A year after the discovery of the oil, the second intifada started. “The rules about exploiting shared, common resources are not very well defined…Therefore, it comes a bit of a tangle of issues, and who gets what could easily be who has the louder gun and the bigger plane”, said Atif Kubursi, a retired economics professor at McMaster University who authored that 2019 UN report.
Israel has been waiting for an opportunity to strike at the Palestinian gas reserves. The October 7th Hamas attack on Israel was taken as an opportunity to force out the Palestinians out of their homeland. Reportedly, on October 29th, Israel government approved 12 licenses for six companies to look for more gas fields offshore.
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The Israeli Intelligence Ministry also suggested the transfer of Palestinian population of Gaza to Sinai Peninsula. Reportedly, Netanyahu also engaged in lobbying the EU to exert pressure on Egypt to approve a massive influx of Gazans into the desert.
Israel granted exploration licenses to six companies to explore the natural gas in the G zone, an area which is adjacent to Gaza coastline. As per the report, 62 percentage of the G zone lies under the maritime boundaries declared by Palestine in 2019 under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which Palestine is a signatory.
Russia has been one of the major energy exporter to the Europe. Since Moscow stopped exporting oil to Europe in 2022, following the outbreak of its war with Ukraine, the West’s quest for oil, and Israel’s desire to become the central hub on the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) route and an alternative energy supplier to the European markets, increased. According to data from the EU Council, the share of Russian pipeline gas in EU imports has plummeted from over 40% in 2021 to approximately 8% in 2023.
Under the international law, the beneficiaries of the oil and gas in the territory should go to the occupied population, and not the occupying power. However, Israel has benefited from the oil and gas lying beneath Palestinian lands and waters.
According to Yasmeen El-Hasan, an advocacy officer with the Palestine-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees, there’s no way to untangle the global thirst for oil and gas from atrocities forced down on the Palestinians. She strongly believes that none of this is a coincidence.
“It is quite apparent that the international complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza is intricately tied to the capitalist interests of global actors and corporations, where financial gain is prioritized over Palestinian lives (and preservation of our environment),” El-Hasan wrote to Atoms via email.
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“Gaza is floating on oil”, said Talaat of MENAFem Movement for Economic, Development, and Ecological Justice said, as quoted by Atoms.
The Arab Nations
There is more to the story. US and Israel may not be the only players in the field. The sickening silence form Arab leaders while Gaza was being marred in blood and destruction was deeply condemned. While previous leaders like King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who cut off oil supplies to US for supporting Israel, the leaders now are heavily criticised for being US lapdogs.
In 1973, King Faisal cut off all oil supplies to the US. Washington then threatened to bomb their oil fields. As a response to the threat King Faisal said “You are the ones who can’t live without oil. Our ancestors lived on dates, we can easily go back and live like that again”.
According to Resource Wars, while war in Gaza has been raging major energy developments in the region have been progressing rapidly.
There is a scramble to kick out Russia from the European oil sequence once and for all. All the players in West Asia, small and big, are in in haste to grab this once in a blue moon opportunity.
While Libya has been in an ongoing civil war since the dethroning of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, things are slightly starting to move up. Last month, a major oil conference was held in Tripoli with many Americans and Europeans in attendance. The country’s Minister of Economy & Trade went public with plans to hold a reconstruction conference immediately. With its largest serves of hydrocarbons, Libya hopes to get back on game.
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The Qatar-Turkey pipeline has also came under scrutiny. The pipeline was planned to transport gas from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to Turkey and Europe. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s then leader, rejected the project in 2009. According to AFP, Assad’s rationale was to safeguard the interests of Russia, his ally. Reportedly, Moscow’s influence allegedly persuaded Assad to reject the deal, ensuring Europe’s continued reliance on Russian gas.
But al-Assad is no more in the equation now. His regime was toppled by rebel group headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda member.
Qatar-Turkey pipeline
Alparslan Bayraktar, earlier announced the proposal to transport Qatari natural gas to Europe via Syria and Turkey. He said, for Syria which has “chieved unity and stability, why not?…If this happens, the route must be secure. Hopefully, it will be, as that is our wish”.
Qatar Emir was the first head of the state to visit Syria since the fall of al-Assad. Al-Sharaa’s first official foreign trip after taking control of Syria was to Saudi Arabia. He also visited Turkey. After meeting with Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, al-Sharaa said said economic cooperation was a key part of their discussions. “We will enhance trade and investment between the two countries (…) in order to achieve economic recovery and establish a better future”, as quoted by AP.
(With inputs from agencies)
