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Debunking the Gaza Oil Myth
Terrorists in Gaza using humanitarian aid bags to prop up rockets. Photo: Screenshot
The claim that Israel’s military actions in Gaza are motivated by a desire to seize Palestinian oil and gas resources has gained traction since October 2023. Reports and op-eds have been published by Al Jazeera, TRT World, and the Middle East Eye, with headlines such as “Israel’s Genocidal War on Gaza Is Also About Oil and Gas.” Various environmental NGOs have followed their lead, claiming that “this genocide is about oil.” These claims were further echoed by prominent anti-Israeli social media influencers such as Richard Medhurst and Jake Shields, who claimed that “massive amounts of oil have been discovered off of Gaza. After the genocide is completed, it will be rightfully Israel’s oil.” Even the poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine claimed that Israel’s war in Gaza was about “the deadly profit of oil interests” in her November 2023 resignation letter from the paper.
None of these claims has any basis in fact. Gaza does not have any known oil reserves. There are also no known assessments regarding potential oil in Gaza that is waiting to be explored. What Gaza does have is a small, undeveloped offshore natural gas field named “Gaza Marine.” The field was discovered in 2000, but was deemed too small to be commercially viable at the time. The field is estimated to contain only 30 BCM of natural gas, which is a small fraction of the more than 1,000 BCM of natural gas contained in Israel’s own territorial waters (in the Tamar, Leviathan, and Karish/Tanin fields). The idea that Israel would go to war over such a marginal gas field is absurd.
The primary source behind this disinformation campaign about Gaza’s alleged oil reserves is a UN body. Specifically, most of the accusations against Israel can be traced to a 2019 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) entitled “The Economic Costs of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: The Unrealized Oil and Natural Gas Potential.” The report, written by Atif Kubursi, Professor Emeritus of Economics at McMaster University in Canada, states that “the Occupied Palestinian Territory lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth,” to the tune of “tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars.” It also claims that there are $524 billion worth of energy reserves in the Levant Basin, a bounty that could be shared among the different parties in the region if not for Israel’s “occupation of the Palestinian people.”
Critics of Israel have latched onto the $524 billion figure from the UNCTAD report to argue that Israel’s war in Gaza is driven by a desire to seize its energy assets. However, the report did not attribute these resources to Gaza or the West Bank but to the entire Levant Basin, which includes Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus. The report estimates that Palestinians have lost approximately $2.57 billion in potential revenue from Gaza Marine due to their inability to develop the field. This revenue could, however, be recouped once the field is developed. Egypt was poised to develop the field and share the revenue with the Palestinian Authority, with the approval of the Israeli government, if not for the current war.
In addition, the report points to the Meged oil field – located primarily within Area C of the West Bank – as another possible source of revenue for Palestinians. However, the report deliberately inflates the significance of the field by relying on outdated figures. The report estimates that the field might contain 1.5 billion barrels of oil and have a potential market value of $71 billion, but these figures are based on unsourced PR claims (rather than available geological evidence) that were released prior to commercial production. These assessments have been proven incorrect following repeated attempts to develop the field. Between 2011 and 2016, the field produced only 1 million barrels and shut down due to technical difficulties and dwindling output. The fact that the field has already been proven economically nonviable was ignored in the report, which continued to cite the debunked assessments.
Even under optimal conditions, the Meged field would not produce enough oil to be a central motivator for Israeli military action in the West Bank. This becomes especially clear when considering that a large part of the field is in Israeli territory, so Israel would not have to occupy Area C to access it and produce from it.
The misleading interpretation of the 2019 UNCTAD report could have been dismissed as an innocent mistake, had UNCTAD itself not deliberately presented the findings in such a way. On its website and subsequent press releases, UNCTAD advertised its report with the headline “The unrealized potential of Palestinian oil and gas reserves.” It continued this misrepresentation with the subhead, “Oil and natural gas resources in the occupied Palestinian territory could generate hundreds of billions of dollars for development.” Again, the report does not attribute these numbers to the Palestinian Territories but to the entire Levant Basin, a fact that cannot be inferred from the headline. Moreover, the UNCTAD press release repeats the claim that “Geologists and resource economists have confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas,” a bald assertion that is not substantiated in the report.
The UNCTAD report has also been criticized for inflating additional figures and relying on dubious conspiracy blogs as its sources of data, raising serious doubts about the credibility and intentions of its author. The political newsletter “Twilight of Greed” took a deep dive into the report and discovered false and deliberately misleading arguments. For example, the report frequently cites the works of Michel Chossudovsky, who is known for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories about how the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks and who was accused by the US State Department in 2020 of being a proxy for a Russian disinformation campaign. Despite this, the report cites Chossudovsky 11 times, making him the single most-cited author in the entire report. It even prints his false assertion that the Gaza Marine field is secretly connected to Israeli underwater infrastructure and is slowly being depleted.
It is appalling that an official UN body would approve of such a report and then continue to publicize it with false claims about its content. One of the most troublesome aspects of the narrative is how quickly it has spread on social media, bolstered by a broader anti-Israeli and anti-imperialist sentiment. Despite efforts by experts to debunk these myths, they have become entrenched in the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These claims have been difficult to counter due to the viral nature of social media misinformation. By the time experts began addressing the flaws in the narrative, the theory had gained millions of adherents online.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza is driven by far more complex political, historical, and security concerns than the control of natural gas or oil. Israel’s current and previous wars in Gaza have focused primarily on security threats posed by Hamas and other militant groups, as well as broader territorial and political disputes. The Gaza Marine and Meged fields, while valuable in an economic sense, are not significant enough to drive military action. The spread of the Gaza oil myth reflects the dangers of relying on dubious sources and conspiracy theories to explain complex geopolitical conflicts. These dangers are only worsened when an official UN body knowingly pushes these theories to center stage, permitting reckless ideologues to launder their viewpoints and providing them with unwarranted credibility.
Dr. Elai Rettig is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies and a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He specializes in energy geopolitics and national security.
Lee Wilcox is a California-based writer and editor for the American political and historical newsletter “Twilight of Greed.” He currently studies US History at the University of California, Davis.
A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday denounced the mass killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the Alawite minority group, in Syria, calling on the newly installed Syrian government to hold the perpetrators “accountable” for the massacres.
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
In a series of clashes beginning on Thursday, fighters allied with the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus. According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” in the towns to dismantle the remaining “remnants” of the regime of former President Bashaar al-Assad, targeting primarily adult men.
According to Syrian officials, the fighting started when a group of Alawite fighters loyal to Assad killed their forces in a premeditated attack.
The ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, highlights growing concerns over the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Syria’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose decades-long Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denounced the Syrian president as a “terrorist” who “switched his robe for a suit and presented a moderate face.”
“Now he’s taken off the mask and exposed his true face: A jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population,” Katz said in a statement. “Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Alawite leaders in Syria have also issued a statement to Israel, calling on the Jewish state to deploy forces in the country to protect its minority civilians.
“Following the fall of Assad’s regime, and after the massacres that took place in Alawite areas against our people, we call on the Israeli government to provide protection, assistance, and support,” the leaders wrote, according to i24 News.
The leaders lamented that “the world is silent about the massacres happening in Syria” and that if the Jewish state offered help, the Alawite Muslims “will be your most loyal and good friends.”
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‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced on Monday an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” a move that follows a series of incidents which have fueled allegations that the campus has become a hub of anti-Jewish discrimination.
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement. “Through this initiative, UCLA will implement recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.”
He continued, “These recommendations include: enhancing relevant training and education, improving the complaint system, assuring enforcement of current and new laws and polices, and cooperating with stakeholders.”
“This is an opportunity for UCLA to rise to the challenge of being an exemplary university,” Frenk concluded.
The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism is the second stage of a process begun by UCLA when it created an antisemitism task force in February 2024. Commissioned to study the problem and issue recommendations, the task force last year issued a report which noted, among other things, that two-thirds of Jewish UCLA students believe that antisemitism on the campus “is a problem or a serious problem,” and a higher share of them, 70 percent, attributed the atmosphere of hatred to the university’s decision to allow a “Gaza encampment” protest during the final days of the 2023-2024 spring semester.
That decision proved fateful, as it prompted a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment. Filed by several students, the complaint argued that the encampment was a source of antisemitism from the moment pro-Hamas agitators installed it. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” the complaint recounted, set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality,” and in doing so, allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
In addition to students, university officials have also been targeted by pro-Hamas activists — as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
On Feb. 5 some 50 members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident. Defying the disciplinary measures, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — the next day marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racism.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
That same month, a Jewish faculty group at the university issued an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they have been subjected in recent months. The missive enumerated a litany of falsehoods spread about Jews by a task force created to study anti-Arab bigotry on the campus — including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression,” promoted the interests of conservative groups, and harmed minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The group added that discrimination at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In Monday’s announcement, Frenk called for reforming UCLA’s culture to ensure that all are accepted, regardless of race, ethnicity, and creed.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” he said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively. The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah
Illustrative: A menorah knocked to the ground by an antisemitic vandal who attacked a Jewish educational center in eastern Moscow. Photo: SHAMIR.
Police in Guilford, Connecticut have arrested and charged Steven Prinz Jr., 25, and Troy Prinz, 22, for allegedly vandalizing a menorah set up for public display.
The menorah’s owner reported the damage to law enforcement on Jan. 13 and provided surveillance video of the Jan. 5 crime. The suspects hid their faces, one with a gas mask and the other with fabric, and knocked over the menorah before stomping it on the ground, breaking multiple parts. Before discovering the footage, the owner had originally reported that wind had knocked down the menorah.
The two brothers, who were arrested on Wednesday, face charges of second-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias, second-degree conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias, first-degree criminal mischief, and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Police released both men after they posted $25,000 court-set bonds.
The Guilford Police Department’s Lt. Martina Jakober said in a statement that the investigation “involved significant cooperation between the police and members of our community in order to locate and preserve the essential evidence needed to properly identify these suspects.”
Jakober added that “the men and women of the Guilford Police Department wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who live and work in the community” and that “our collective efforts, as the police and the community, ultimately resulted in their identification and arrest.”
Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, director for Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline which had set up the menorah, released a statement following the arrests.
“This aberration does not represent the Guilford community. For 25 years, Chabad of the Shoreline’s menorah has illuminated Guilford without incident,” Yaffe stated. “Throughout the years, many residents from different faith communities and from across the political spectrum have expressed their appreciation and pride in having a menorah on the Guilford town green. With G-d’s help, we will continue to share the menorah’s light for many years to come!”
Yaffe announced that the hate crime targeting the menorah had inspired the community to increase its efforts to promote the holiday, with plans to increase displays and distribution of menorahs next Hanukkah.
Jakober said that the police department intends “to reflect on this incident and continuously work to figure out an ever-strengthening partnership with the community.” She added that “together, we can be sure that acts of hate or bias have no place in Guilford.”
Last week, the legal system made further efforts to counter alleged hate crimes in New York and Florida.
In Manhattan on Thursday, prosecutors said that Utah man Luis Ramirez, 23, allegedly proclaimed himself “Hitler reincarnated,” threatened to kill “as many Jews as I killed in [World War II],” and targeted New York City’s Central Synagogue. The judge denied bail for Ramirez and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation.
Prosecutors said that Ramirez had shown signs of paranoia and delusion which included calling himself by the names of “biblical characters.” Court documents stated that Ramirez had been diagnosed as “schizophrenic, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and not being connected to reality.” A military officer cadet training school had reportedly discharged Ramirez for psychological reasons. Photos from Ramirez’s court appearance show him grinning.
Ramirez faces as much as 15 years’ imprisonment for a terrorism charge. “He is now charged with significant terrorism and hate crime charges and was remanded into custody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “Any form of antisemitism is despicable, and I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know we are remaining extremely vigilant.”
The judge scheduled Ramirez’s next court appearance for March 20.
Meanwhile, in Florida on Wednesday, the Boynton Beach Police Department arrested Adam Elshazly, charging him with allegedly targeting his former employer with violent and antisemitic threats via texts on July 2, 2024. The messages included antisemitic images and threats of violent sexual abuse against the victim’s wife and daughter. The victim told police that he had hired Elshazly 10 years ago for a job and fired him three days later for poor performance, not to hear from him again until receiving the text messages.
Police charged Elshazly with a count of intimidation with prejudice while committing an offense and released him the next day following the posting of a $30,000 bond. A judge scheduled his arraignment for Thursday.
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