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The economic beneficiaries of a second Nakba
After US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called for “a humanitarian pause,” Israel intensified air strikes on hospitals, ambulances, refugee camps, UN schools, turning the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for children. Yet, Blinken has rejected the push from Arab states for a ceasefire on the grounds that Hamas could still attack Israel, which essentially means Netanyahu’s government isn’t currently under substantial pressure to stop the ceaseless bombings or ground invasion.
According to a rare and recent investigation by The New York Times , speaking to six diplomats, Israel has quietly pushed for more Gazans to leave, framing it as a humanitarian initiative for civilians to temporarily escape what they call “the perils of Gaza” for refugee camps in the Sinai desert. This lends itself to the Palestinian claim that Israel is intentionally pursuing a “second Nakba ”—the mass displacement of Palestinian people, similar to 1948—to claim the entirety of the Gaza Strip for itself. When criticising the Israeli military’s unstoppable onslaught in Gaza, and the US for backing it, underlying economic motives are rarely assessed in the fog of political and moral debates. But economic benefits are ingrained in the politics of greed, pushing Israel’s systematic eliminationist campaigns and assaults.
The coastal strip of Gaza and Israeli-Occupied Palestinian Territory sit above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas, which offer an opportunity to distribute and share $524 billion among different parties in the region, according to a 2017 study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The UNCTAD report also stated, “What could be a source of wealth and opportunities could prove disastrous if these common resources are exploited individually and exclusively, without due regard for international law and norms.” The opportunity costs of Israeli occupation—with ongoing restrictions on mobility, access and trade—exclusively in the area of oil and natural gas have accumulated tens, if not hundreds, of billion dollars. UNCTAD also estimated that the Palestinians, under occupation in the 2007-17 period, lost $47.7 billion in revenues leaked to Israel.
Israel has exclusively explored drilling new oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Leviathan field, and signed billion-dollar deals with Jordan and Egypt, while Arab citizens protested with their rejection of energy “stolen from occupied Palestine.” In the current geopolitical context, natural gas and LNG reflect tools to deepen political relationships through economic dependence. It’s at the heart of normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab states, ignoring the Palestinian cause.
In Israel’s current war-mongering policy, exterminating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and creating a buffer zone would give Israel open access to Gaza’s gas reserves. It also serves the long-term US-Israel energy cooperation agreement, which stipulates that the development of natural resources by Israel are in the “strategic interest” of the US. This is relevant especially now as the US seeks to tighten its loosening grip in the Middle East in a crumbling world order.
The blood of the innocent Palestinian civilians—the children, the infants—lie in a complex global capitalist system that systematically profits from mass killings of marginalised people.
A lot has also been said about the pro-Israeli lobby driving the Biden administration’s moral hypocrisy in arming up Israel’s powerful military. But to be more specific, a part of the problem is the Pentagon’s increased reliance on the private weapons sector. The arms and weapons industry booms during war; when more people die from bombs or shots, they profit more.
A study by the Watson Institute at Brown University in 2021 revealed that one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years have gone to just five major weapons contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. Unsurprisingly, stocks of these companies also surged by seven percent since the Hamas attack and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The outsized influence of the private sector contractors is manifested in the lion’s share of Pentagon receipts in post-9/11 US wars.
While people all over the world watch Israel blowing whole Palestinian families into bits, transcripts of an off-camera press briefing by the deputy press secretary of the Pentagon on October 30, show that the US is not putting any limitations on how Israel uses weapons that are provided.
At the same time, big Wall Street institutions consumed the news of mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, with an eye towards big profits for their clients in the weapons and aerospace sector, as revealed by transcripts of third-quarter earnings calls this month. An analyst in TD Cowen blatantly asked the CFO of General Dynamics about the incremental acceleration of demand of their products resulting from the Israel-Hamas war. The CFO responded, “We’re working ahead of schedule to accelerate the production capacity...the Israel situation is going to put upward pressure on that demand...the biggest one to highlight is on the artillery side.”
It’s also worth noting that prolonging the Ukraine war has benefited US-based defence and weapons contractors, whose values have surged since the beginning of the war. Take, for example, Lockheed Martin, whose value stood at $98 billion in 2022, and reached its highest records at the end of the year, at $127 billion, currently standing at a market capitalisation of $112.2 billion. In the maths of billions, Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and the indiscriminate killings of civilians, avoiding a ceasefire, will shore up profits for the US military-industrial complex that enjoys the spoils of warfare.