Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Israel to purchase Palestinian gas

Haaretz reported British gas producer BG Group is making progress in talks about supplying Palestinian gas to Israel from off the Gaza coast but political tensions remain an obstacle to a potential deal, it said on Wednesday.
A very big obstacle. If Fatah was in power it would pretend to be peaceful, and make the deal, and then steal the money paid by Israel, but I dont think Hamas is smart enough to even pretend that it can deal with Israel, even to get a bunch of money it desperately needs.
A deal would have a significant impact on the Palestinian government, which is in the middle of a cash crunch. It would result in $100 million a year in taxes, royalties and equity. The British newspaper The Times reported that the group was poised to agree on the terms of a $4 billion deal to supply gas to Israel, with representatives from the British energy firm scheduled to meet Israeli negotiators next week. "At the moment we are making progress in the negotiations. but any potential deal will require bilateral engagement between the two governments [Israel and Palestinian Authority] to get the project across the line," a BG spokesman said.
One of them is civilized, and capable of making a deal with its neighbors. The other is not.
"There are still commercial issues to be resolved in the negotiations but the fundamental point here is that bilateral engagement is absolutely essential to get any project across the line."

Meryl Yourish blogged If Israel were the evil, racist, apartheid, monster state that everyone says it is, she would simply commandeer that part of Gaza that holds the natural gas fields and not pay for it. Funny how that works, though. Israel’s going to seal the deal that can only help the Palestinian economy—well, it would if the leadership weren’t going to steal the money from its people.... I would love to hear the answer to these questions from, say, Adam Shapiro. But then, he’s too busy calling Israel a racist, evil, apartheid, warmongering state to notice that Israel is perfectly willing to get along with the Palestinians. It’s the Palestinians who don’t want to get along with Israel.

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