On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> All of a sudden Israel in interested in helping the Palestinians:
>
> For example:
>
> "Significantly, Israel has agreed to begin discussions on the
> development of a Palestinian Authority gas field adjacent to an Israeli
> gas field off the coast of Gaza, which need to be developed
> simultaneously. Future revenues from the Palestinian field will go to
> the authority, Mr. Netanyahu said.
I think this is about the gas. They want to talk about co-development because suddenly Israel might need it. Up until now, Israel has been getting cut rate natural gas from Egypt through a dodgy deal:
http://www.counterpunch.org/alamin02012011.html
February 1, 2011
People Power in Action The Making of Egypt's Revolution
By ESAM AL-AMIN
<snip>
Salem [one of Mubarak's two sons] was the head of a private energy
company that teamed up with an
Israeli conglomerate to secure a long-term contract to sell natural gas
to Israel. In June 2008 Les Afriques reported that Egypt was
subsidizing Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars every year in
energy purchase. By January 2010, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz exposed
the secret and reported that Israel was in fact receiving natural gas
from Egypt at a 70 per cent discount. The scandal was swept aside by
the former Egyptian prime minister who refused to divulge to the
parliament the terms of the contract. Subsequently when the government
was sued, a judge ruled against it and invalidated the contract, which
the government totally ignored.
<end excerpt>
Michael