Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research: The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25-year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority... The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline... The BG license covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine...
These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel's energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eliat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport-pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
