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Did oil discovery trigger Trump’s historic Golan move?
Israel had seized much of the Golan from Syria in 1967 and annexed it 1981, a move the international community never recognised. But last week, Trump signed a proclamation declaring Israeli sovereignty over the Heights.
Last Sunday in Tunis, as Arab leaders condemned a move by the US to recognise Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights, the spotlight fell on what could be real reason behind the historic decision.
Was it only about Donald Trump forging closer ties with Tel Aviv? Was it just about the April 9 Israeli elections for which an embattled Benjamin Netanyahu needs a vote-garnering nationalistic fillip?
If one is to go by the buzz in certain sections of the international media, the discovery of massive oil reserves under the Golan rocks, and the subsequent need to give the disputed lands legitimacy, perhaps sparked the American move.
Israel had seized much of the Golan from Syria in 1967 and annexed it 1981, a move the international community never recognised. But last week, Trump signed a proclamation declaring Israeli sovereignty over the Heights.
A March 19, 2019 report by state-based Russia Today (Oil profits grease Trump administration’s move to recognise Israeli annexation of Golan), published just a few days before Trump’s declaration, claims that at the heart of it are “huge anticipated US-Israeli oil profits”.
“US oil company Genie, through its Israeli subsidiary, was given exploration rights to drill the occupied territory by the Netanyahu government inApril 2013. Two years later, a major oil discovery was made. It was following the oil discovery that Israeli officials intensified diplomatic efforts to change US policy on Golan’s status. The Obama administration reportedly rebuffed Netanyahu’s supplications. But with the election of Trump, Tel Aviv appears to have found a more willing White House occupant,” RT reported.
The Economist ran a similar report nearly four years back. In the November 7, 2015report (Black gold under the Golan), the UK-based magazine said, “Israeli and American oilmen believe they have discovered a bonanza in this most inconvenient of sites… Yuval Bartov, the chief geologist of Genie Oil & Gas, a subsidiary of American-based Genie Energy, says his company thinks it has found an oil reservoir with the potential of billions of barrels.”
The Economist report also shed light on US interests in Golan’s oil wealth. “In America, Genie has increased its clout… it added some influential new members to an advisory board that already included a former vice-president, Dick Cheney, and a media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch. One was Larry Summers, treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. Also added were two Clinton-era appointees: Bill Richardson, ex-ambassador to the UN and energy secretary, and James Woolsey, former CIA director.”
Despite the clear US-Israel-oil link here, why would Washington still need to recognise Israeli authority over Golan?
That answer is a dead giveaway. Since the Heights are deemed as illegally occupied territory, there’s a grey area over whether foreign-backed commercial exploration and trade of Golan oil can be carried out lawfully.
If overseas oil interests, including American, are to tap into Golan’s black gold, the ‘genie’ must be let out of the bottle. That genie is perhaps Trump’s proclamation, which is an effort to give oil-rich Golan the legitimacy it never had since 1967.
