Numerous intelligence operations have been performed in the last year in a naked attempt to draw Iran into a wider war with the United States. The attempt to assassinate Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon earlier this year ended with complete Israeli failure. It was through the assassination of Nasrallah that Israel had hoped to draw Iran into a wider Middle East conflict.
An uprising in the south, namely in Gaza through Hamas, represents Israel's last best hope for drawing Iran into a negotiation that they cannot hope to win. Starving innocent people and turning Gaza into a ghetto at a time when even the citizens of Gaza want Hamas out, seems to be a bit extreme. The launching of homemade rockets into Israeli territory, rockets that have killed perhaps 8 Israelis in the last two years, suggests that Hamas itself has placed innocent Palestinians in harm's way for some greater nefarious purpose. Especially given the events of the last 24 hours, no one can seriously claim that Hamas has the best interests of the Palestinian people in heart or mind.
Unless, of course, the best interests of the Palestinian people have little to do with Hamas’ interests.
If one assumes that Mumbai had more to do with scuttling a pipeline deal between India, Pakistan and Iran, then the only other source of energy to feed India and China’s growing economies has to come from the Caspian Sea basin. This would require shipment of the oil by sea to Suez and through the Gulf of Aidan. The Gulf of Aidan is surrounded by the UAE to the east and, on the west, by Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Djbouti and, of course, Somalia. Does this not sound like the “greatest hits” of the mainstream media for the past several years?
With reports from Gaza of Egypt’s tacit complicity in Israel’s apartheid of Gaza, reports of Somali piracy and the military attention of the world focused on the mouth of the Gulf of Aidan, one can see several scenarios that involve the use of both Israel and/or Egypt as receiving points of Caspian Sea oil and natural gas. Iran’s support of insurgencies in both Gaza and Lebanon begin to make more sense in light not of the plight of the Palestinian people, but of the value of the energy resources to be shipped from the Caspian Sea, as opposed to Iran’s own abundant energy reserves.
The ferocity and speed of Israel’s attack on Gaza suggests not that the rocket attacks on Israel were particularly troubling (they have been going on for about two years), but that there is an energy deal taking place that has a limited shelf life and is designed to further isolate Iran from the global economy. That would be the economy that is falling apart at the seams and could, within 90 days, be known as the economy suffering from, “the Very Great Depression.” So much for globalization, so much for capitalism and its fascist shadow, so much for Palestinian statehood. The whole spectacle has been political theatre to serve as cover for an untold tale of money and power from the very beginning.
Hamas and Iran would like very much to be included in any decisions that involve Gaza’s indigenous people, not unlike how the United States has permitted its indigenous people to operate dens of inequity and exploitation for use by invading hordes of non-indigenous people. In trade, Native Americans have had to grant the FBI and American corporations the special right to exploit their land at their expense, land granted them long before non-indigenous white people realized it would ever be useful to anyone. In the case of Gaza’s indigenous people, the shortest and safest distance between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Aidan that does not alienate Israel runs right through Gaza. Given enough time and punishment, the citizens of Gaza will be more than willing, just as Native Americans have, to have dangerous resources shipped right through their backyards so that they garner all the risks and none of the profits of the associated economy that resources and raw materials provide. The real losers in this global game of economic cat and mouse will be the world’s poor, and the Gazans are among the world’s poorest, and certainly most widely known repressed, people.
Capitalism and its fascist shadow have all along been about shedding innocent blood to build their “civilization,” leaving one to ponder how capitalism expects to continue to “grow” when there is no longer any innocent blood left to be shed.
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