Fri 28 Jul 2006
The War On Lebanon And the Battle for Oil
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Peak Oil , Geopolitics
Michel Chossudovsky asks “Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and
the inauguration of the World’s largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.
One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey’s President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Ǣra©£an Palace.
Also in attendance was British Petroleum’s (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France’s Total and Italy’s ENI. (see Annex)
Israel’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli oil officials.
The BTC pipeline totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, both of which have become US “protectorates”, firmly integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military cooperation agreements with Israel. In 2005, Georgian companies received some $24 million in military contracts funded out of U.S. military assistance to Israel under the so-called “Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program”.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/states/GA.html
Israel has a stake in the Azeri oil fields, from which it imports some twenty percent of its oil. The opening of the pipeline will substantially enhance Israeli oil imports from the Caspian sea basin.
But there is another dimension which directly relates to the war on Lebanon. Whereas Russia has been weakened, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role in “protecting” the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan.
Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean
The bombing of Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East Mediterranean coastline.
In this context, the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked , through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:
“[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region’s countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, ” (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)
Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.
While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will “channel oil to Western markets”, what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel’s main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.
The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are farreaching.
In April 2006, Israel and Turkey announced plans for four underwater pipelines, which would bypass Syrian and Lebanese territory.
“Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East,
The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&
pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
“Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]”
“Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400 km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in tankers. (REGNUM )
Water for Israel
Also involved in this project is a pipeline to bring water to Israel, pumping water from upstream resources of the Tigris and Euphrates river system in Anatolia. This has been a long-run strategic objective of Israel to the detriment of Syria and Iraq. Israel’s agenda with regard to water is supported by the military cooperation agreement between Tel Aviv and Ankara.
The Re-routing of Central Asian Oil
Diverting Central Asian oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean (under Israeli military protection), for re-export to Asia, serves to undermine the inter-Asian energy market, which is based on the development of direct pipeline corridors linking Central Asia and Russia to South Asia, China and the Far East.
Ultimately, this design is intended to weaken Russia’s role in Central Asia and cut off China from Central Asian oil resources. It is also intended to isolate Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as a new powerful player in the global energy market.
War and Oil Pipelines
Prior to the bombing of Lebanon, Israel and Turkey had announced the underwater pipeline routes, which bypassed Syria and Lebanon. These underwater pipeline routes did not overtly encroach on the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria.
On the other hand, the development of alternative land based corridors (for oil and water) through Lebanon and Syria would require Israeli-Turkish territorial control over the Eastern Mediterranean coastline through Lebanon and Syria.
The implementation of this project requires the militarisation of the East Mediterranean coastline, sea ways and land routes, extending from the port of Ceyhan across Syria and Lebanon to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Is this not one of the hidden objectives of the war on Lebanon? Open up a space which enables Israel to control a vast territory extending from the Lebanese border through Syria to Turkey.
“The Long War”
Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert has stated that the Israeli offensive against Lebanon would “last a very long time”. Meanwhile, the US has speeded up weapons shipments to Israel.
There are strategic objectives underlying the “Long War” which are tied to oil and oil pipelines.
The air campaign against Lebanon is inextricably related to US-Israeli strategic objectives in the broader Middle East including Syria and Iran. In recent developments, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stated that the main purpose of her mission to the Middle East was not to push for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but rather to isolate Syria and Iran. (Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2006)
At this particular juncture, the replenishing of Israeli stockpiles of US produced WMDs points to an escalation of the war both within and beyond the borders of Lebanon.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060726&articleId=2824
6 Responses to “The War On Lebanon And the Battle for Oil”
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July 28th, 2006 at 11:22 am
this is terrifying
August 7th, 2006 at 4:36 am
This is a total disgrace and will blow up in the western worlds face. Not matter how powerful the US thinks it is, it can’t fight a battle on 3 or more fronts.
August 10th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Strangly the main stream media hasn’t picked up on this angle of the War in Lebanon.
August 10th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Hizbullah’s capture of Israeli soldiers provided the excuse for an assault planned for months.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th August 2006
Whatever we think of Israel’s assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this “fact” in my last column, when I wrote that “Hizbullah fired the first shots”. This being so, the Israeli government’s supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It’s an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.
Since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the “blue line” between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line “on an almost daily basis” between 2001 and 2003, and “persistently” until 2006(1). These incursions “caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas”. On some occasions Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.
In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005 and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, “none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation”(2).
On May 26th this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad – Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub – were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency(3). In June a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994(4). Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region “remained tense and volatile”, UNIFIL says it was “generally quiet” until July 12th(5).
There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon(6), but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have be found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab. Now it states simply that “the Islamic Resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine”(7). Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12th, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but UNIFIL makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid – 9 am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.
But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon(8) and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention(9)) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would – without the spillage of any more blood – have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead – well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.
On July 12th, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years, by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail.”(10) The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that “of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared … By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”(11)
A “senior Israeli official” told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a “unique moment” for wiping out Hizbullah(12). The New Statesman’s editor John Kampfner says he was told by more than one official source that the United States government knew in advance of Israel’s intention to take military action in Lebanon(13). The Bush administration told the British government(14).
Israel’s assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim – also with justification – that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12th were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.
So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line – in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. UNIFIL, August 2006. Lebanon – UNIFIL - Background. http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html
2. ibid.
3. See FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), 28th July 2006. Down the Memory Hole: Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2928
4. Nicholas Blanford, 15th June 2006. Lebanon exposes deadly Israeli spy ring. The Times.
5. UNIFIL, 21st July 2006. Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations
Interim Force in Lebanon (For the period from 21 January 2006 to 18 July 2006). UN Security Council.
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/437/22/IMG/N0643722.pdf?OpenElement
6. See for example Joshua Frank, 25th July 2006. Kidnapped in Israel; Captured in Lebanon?
http://www.palestinechronicle.org/story-07250662242.htm and http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/israeli_solders.html
7. Hizbullah, quoted by Big News Network.com, 4th August 2006. Hezbollah not to blame for war, reports show. http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=b9f8e9f0e04f1f52
8. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
9. They are listed by the Khiam Center, at:
http://www.khiamcenter.org/names%20of%20leb%20detainees%20and%20missing.doc
10. Matthew Kalman, 21st July 2006. Israel set war plan more than a year ago:
Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon. San Francisco Chronicle.
11. Quoted by Matthew Kalman, ibid.
12. Robin Wright, 16th July 2006. Strikes Are Called Part of Broad Strategy: U.S., Israel Aim to Weaken Hezbollah, Region’s Militants. Washington Post. My attention was drawn to this article by Tanya Reinhart, 28th July 2006. Israel’s “New Middle East”. www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/treinhart17.htm
13. John Kampfner, pers comm.
14. John Kampfner, 7th August 2006. Blood on his hands. New Statesman.
August 10th, 2006 at 2:16 am
Tang is right to highlight Monbiot’s article - the key issue is that the assault on Lebanon is premeditated and given approval by the US (and UK). It must be seen as part of the wider reshaping of the Middle East by force begun in Iraq and however understandable Israel’s desire to destroy Hezbullah may be must be seen in the the wider geopolitical context.
Jonathan Cook (http://www.jkcook.net) examines the draft UN resolution:
Now, The Theater Of War
Moves To The UN
By Jonathan Cook
in Nazareth
If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel’s war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “cessation of major hostilities” published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, noted the Hebrew-language media, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton at the UN building in New York.
The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper, was the fear that “demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel.” So no celebration parties till the resolution is passed.
Instead, in a cynical ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes, Israel submitted to the US a list of requests for amendments to the resolution. When Israel agrees to forgo these amendments, it will, of course, be able to take credit for its flexibility and desire to compromise; Lebanon and Hizbullah, on the other hand, will be cast as villains, rejecting international peace-making efforts.
The reason for Israel’s barely concealed pleasure is that Hizbullah now faces an international diplomatic and public relations assault in place of the unsuccessful Israeli military one. Israel, and the United States, are trying to set a series of traps for Hizbullah — and Lebanon too — that will justify Israel’s reoccupation of south Lebanon, the further ethnic cleansing of the country, and a widening of the war to include Iran, and possibly Syria.
The clues were not hard to decode. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, characterised the aim of the resolution as clarifying who is acting in good faith. “We’re going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn’t,” she said. Or, in other words, we are going to be able to blame Hizbullah for the hostilities because we have offered them terms of surrender we know they will never agree to.
The main sticking point for Hizbullah is to be found in the resolution’s requirement that it must stop fighting and begin a process of disarmament at a time when Israeli forces are still occupying Lebanese territory and when there may be a lengthy, if not interminable, wait for their replacement by international peacekeepers. Not only that, but the resolution allows Israel to continue its military operations for defensive purposes: Hizbullah only has to look to Gaza or the West Bank to see what Israel is likely to consider falling under the rubric of “defensive”.
Hizbullah has been stockpiling weapons since Israel’s withdrawal in May 2000 precisely to create a “balance of deterrence”, to make Israel more cautious about sating its demonstrated appetite for occupying its neighbours’ lands, particularly when the neighbour is a small country like Lebanon without a proper army and divided into many sectarian groups, some of which, for a price, may be willing to collaborate with Israel.
This time, however, as Israeli troops struggle back towards the Litani River and their initial goal of creating a “buffer zone” similar to the one they held on to for nearly two decades, the Lebanese are rallying behind Hizbullah, convinced that the Shiite militia is their only protection against Western machinations for a “new Middle East”.
Israel and Washington, however, may hope that, given time, they can break that national solidarity by provoking a civil war in Lebanon to deplete local energies, similar to Israel’s attempts at engineering feuds between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied Palestinian territories. Certainly, it is difficult to make sense otherwise of Israel’s bombing for the first time of Christian neighbourhoods in Beirut and what looks like the intended ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims from Sidon, which was leafletted by Israeli war planes at the weekend.
On the US-Israeli view, a nation of refugees living in an open-air prison cut off from the outside world and deprived of food and aid — a more ambitious version of the Gaza model — may eventually be persuaded to take their wrath out on their Shiite defenders.
Hizbullah understands that the proposal to bring in a force of international peacekeepers is another trap. Either the foreign troops will never arrive, because on these Israeli-imposed terms there can be no ceasefire, or, if they do arrive, they will quickly become a proxy occupation army. Israel will have its new South Lebanon Army, supplied direct this time from the UN and subsidised by the West. If Hizbullah fights, it will be killing foreign peacekeepers not Israeli soldiers.
But Israel knows the international force is almost certainly a non-starter, which seems to be the main reason it has now, belatedly, become so enthusiastic for it. Senior Israeli government officials were saying as much in the Hebrew-language media on Sunday.
Israel’s Justice Minister, the increasingly hawkish Haim Ramon, summed up the view from Tel Aviv: “Even if it is passed, it is doubtful that Hezbollah will honor the resolution and halt its fire. Therefore we have to continue fighting, continue hitting anyone we can hit in Hezbollah, and I assume that as long as that goes on, Israel’s standing, diplomatically and militarily, will improve.”
Israel hopes it will be able to keep hitting Hizbullah harder — at less cost to its troops and civilians, and with improved diplomatic standing — because in the next phase, after the resolution is passed, the Shiite militia will find that one arm has been tied, figuratively speaking, behind its back.
Not only will Washington and Israel blame Hizbullah for refusing to agree to the ceasefire but they will seek to use any retaliation against Israeli “defensive” aggression — including, presumably, further invasion — as a pretext for widening the war and dragging in the real target of their belligerence: Iran.
This subterfuge was voiced at the weekend by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who told the BBC that if Hizbullah fired at Tel Aviv — which it has threatened to do if Israel continues attacking Beirut — this would be tantamount to an “act of war” that could only have been ordered by Iran. In other words, at some point soon Israel may stop blaming Hizbullah and turn its fire — defensively, of course — on Iran.
This linkage is being carefully prepared by Olmert. On Monday, according to the Hebrew-language press, he told some 50 government spokespeople what message to deliver to the foreign media: “Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent.” According to Haaretz, he urged the spokespeople “not to be ashamed to express emotion and appeal to feelings”.
So in the coming days, in the wake of this US-Israeli concoction of an impossible peace, we are going to be hearing a lot more nonsense from Israel and the White House about Iran’s role in supposedly initiating and expanding this war, its desire to “wipe Israel off the map” and the nuclear weapons it is developing so that it can achieve its aim.
The capture of two Israeli soldiers on 12 July will be decoupled from Hizbullah’s domestic objectives. No one will talk of those soldiers as bargaining chips in the prisoner swap Hizbullah has been demanding; or as an attempt by Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to deflect US-inspired political pressure on him to disarm his militia and leave Lebanon defenceless to Israel’s long-planned invasion; or as a populist show of solidarity by Hizbullah with the oppressed Palestinians of Gaza.
Those real causes of hostilities will be ignored as more, mostly Lebanese, civilians die, and Israel and the US expand the theatre of war. Instead we will hear much of the rockets that are still landing in northern Israel and how they have been supplied by Iran. The fact that Hizbullah attacks followed rather precipitated Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon will be forgotten. Rockets fired by Hizbullah to stop Israeli aggression against Lebanon will be retold as an Iranian-inspired war to destroy the Jewish state. The nuclear-armed Goliath of Israel will, once again, be transformed into a plucky little David. Or at least such is the Israeli and US scenario.
August 11th, 2006 at 2:43 am
A Post Oil Man “with lots of rope and wire and duct tape”:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4cTskwGOSms