Commentary/Contentions..
03 April '13..
For decades, one of the standard jokes of the Jewish world was how it was that Moses had led the Children of Israel to what seemed to be one of the few spots in the Middle East without oil. Indeed, part of the narrative of modern Israel’s first 65 years has been its struggle to maintain its existence in the face of a siege financed by an Arab world awash in oil revenue. Its survival was a testimony to the fact that oil money is no match for Jewish brains and courage. But the story of the next 65 years of Israeli history is not likely to be the same kind of David and Goliath tale. As the opening of the Tamar natural gas reservoir in the Mediterranean off of Haifa indicates, the era of Israelis being victimized by an energy industry controlled solely by their enemies is over.
The flow of gas from the Tamar field didn’t get the attention devoted to Palestinian terrorism and slanted stories about Israeli measures of self-defense, but it may well turn out to be a turning point in the country’s history. The high-tech revolution that has galvanized the country’s economy had already made it the quintessential Start-Up Nation, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book termed it. The drive toward energy independence and eventually toward the status of energy exporter will only accentuate Israel’s economic strength that will make the country not only richer but also more secure.
The flow of gas and the possibility of the country also being able to develop shale oil deposits are to be celebrated as signs that Israel is, as President Obama put it last month, “not going anywhere.” But no one should be under the impression that a strong economy or even a gas export business will end the conflict with the Muslim and Arab worlds. As much as Israel’s isolation has been exacerbated by the power of Arab oil, economics does not explain the level of animus directed at it in Europe or elsewhere. A hundred Tamar fields cannot make anti-Semitism disappear.
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