Guardian posts article by conspiracy theorist about 'secret' cause of the Gaza war

The headline alone accompanyin a July 9th column by Nafeez Ahmed at the Earth Insight page of the Guardian says it all:
hot air
Ahmed explains:

Since the discovery of oil and gas in the Occupied Territories, resource competition has increasingly been at the heart of the conflict, motivated largely by Israel’s increasing domestic energy woes.

So, contrary to reports demonstrating that Israel will soon achieve energy independence and is set to become a net exporter of natural gas – and may one day, due to its reserve of oil shale, be able to pump 100,000 barrels of oil a day – Guardian readers are asked to believe that Israel has an energy crisis, one which prompted the current war against Hamas.
Ahmed continues:

Mark Turner, founder of the Research Journalism Initiativereported that the siege of Gaza and ensuing military pressure was designed to “eliminate” Hamas as “a viable political entity in Gaza” to generate a “political climate” conducive to a gas deal. 

While information on Research Journalism Initiative is sparse, Turner appears to be a pro-Palestinian activist who was once active with the pro-terror International Solidarity Movement.  (Further, the article by Turner cited in the previous passage was published at Electronic Intifada in 2008.)  
Ahmed continues:

A 2012 letter by two Israeli government chief scientists – which the Israeli government chose not to disclose – warned the government that Israel still had insufficient gas resources to sustain exports despite all the stupendous discoveries. The letter, according to Ha’aretz, stated that Israel’s domestic resources were 50% less than needed to support meaningful exports, and could be depleted in decades:

However, the article he linked to merely cites one opinion suggesting that Israel should reduce the quantity of natural gas it plans to export by 2020, warning that, otherwise, it may exhaust its reserves in four decades or so – reflecting the broader debate over how the government should balance domestic use with exports.
Though Ahmed pivots later in the article to different matters entirely, the other ‘evidence’ he adds to buttress his main theory consists of the following:

For the Israeli government, Hamas continues to be the main obstacle to the finalisation of the gas deal. In the incumbent defence minister’s (Ya’alon) words: “Israel’s experience during the Oslo years indicates Palestinian gas profits would likely end up funding terrorism against Israel. The threat is not limited to Hamas… It is impossible to prevent at least some of the gas proceeds from reaching Palestinian terror groups.”

However, Ahmed is quoting Ya’alon from a 2007 JCPA article, and it’s unclear how his warning 7 years ago are relevant to either Israel’s Tamar Gas Field, located far from the Gaza coast (within Israel’s own economic zone, roughly 80 kilometers west of Haifa), or with the current war against Hamas.
In the final paragraph, Ahmed concedes that the “Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources”, but fails of course to hint that the current conflict may, just possibly, have something to do with thousands of rocket attacks launched by an Islamist extremist group committed to the Jewish state’s destruction.
Finally, perhaps we shouldn’t be at all surprised by Ahmed’s bizarre theory on the “root cause” of the current conflict, given his history of such fanciful “troof’ telling.  It appears that the Guardian contributor is somewhat of a 9/11 (and 7/7 bombings) conspiracy theorist.  Here’s the Amazon synopsis of his book, titled ‘The War on Freedom: How and why America was attacked on 9/11‘.

A disturbing expose of the American government’s hidden agenda, before and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A wide range of documents show US officials knew in advance of the ‘Boeing bombing’ plot, yet did nothing. Did the attacks fit in with plans for a more aggressive US foreign policy? Nafeez Ahmed examines the evidence, direct and circumstantial, and lays it before the public in chilling detail: how FBI agents who uncovered the hijacking plot were muzzled, how CIA agents trained Al Qaeda members in terror tactics, how the Bush family profited from its business connections to the Bin Ladens, and from the Afghan war. A ‘must read’ for anyone seeking to understand America’s New War on Terror.

And, as we’ve demonstrated repeatedly, the Guardian is clearly a ‘must read’ for anyone curious about the hard left’s continuing descent into the intellectual abyss of ‘radical’, anti-Zionist, conspiracy-minded agitprop. 

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