Starving the Leviathan

For 17 times in the Bible Israel is called "a land flowing with milk and honey". With a remarkable auto-ironic attitude, Israelis use to tell a joke about Moses on the mountain, looking out over the Promised Land, frustrated that he will only see it but not cross into it. In his conversation with God, the old Patriarch said: "God, how wonderful! A land flowing with milk and honey -- wonderful!". After a pause, Moses addes timidly: "But God, how about some oil?". In fact, for a long time the only oil associated with Israel was the olive oil.
The milk and honey narrative goes deep inside Israel’s weltanschauung. They are considered symbols of a comprehensive anthropological vision of what means a good life. Milk resonates with motherhood, nourishment, and love, as well as protection and empowerment. Honey symbolizes sweetness, joy and celebration.
However, on a more prosaic note, the milk and honey/gas and oil cleavage has been for decades an additional fault line between Israel and the Arab countries. Some analysts saw exactly in that gap the source of a political-economic resented attitude: the "resource envy", even though Israel had discovered, in 2009, a natural gas deposit - the Tamar field - in the Mediterranean Sea, located roughly 50 miles west of Haifa.
Until recently. At the beginning of this year, the discovery of a very large natural gas field on the maritime borders between Israel, Lebanon, the Gaza strip, Cyprus and Northern Cyprus created many expectations. The area – called “Levant Basin province” – contains a section which is believed to possible hide, alongside natural gas, 4.2 barrels of oil.
The really new factor does not consist in the availability of energy sources for internal consumption. This may be a very important and even strategic objective, but what represents a game changer is the perspective of Israel becoming an energy exporter country. The impact on the regional market and on the international economic and political system would be huge. In fact, whereas Israel’s Tamar gas field is capable of supplying the country’s domestic natural gas field for the next twenty years, in principle the Leviathan field gas deposit (estimate twice the volume as Tamar) could go for export.
All that is pure speculation. The name chosen for new discovery is not among the most reassuring concepts: the “Leviathan field”; but it could prove appropriate. The gigantic natural gas field is located in between countries and political entities with endless amount of mutual distrust. That’s why the delight in Israel about the deposit news was immediately tempered by the awareness that it could provide the spark to ignite a new confrontation in an already troubled region. The Tamar field is already disputed by Lebanon. The discovery of “Leviathan” is likely to follow the same pattern, adding new fuel to an offshore territorial dispute between Lebanon and Israel.
The biblical image of the Leviathan – a marine monster, who appears to be invincible in the Book of Job - was borrowed by Thomas Hobbes to found the legitimacy of the modern State in the need to overcome the state of nature, characterized by fear and war. In our post-modern times, freedom from fear may consist instead in looking beyond the Leviathan. In Europe, for many decades across the XIX e XX centuries coal and steel fed the monster. Let’s starve the beast.

Israele e la primavera araba

Può sembrare paradossale che Israele, che per molto tempo è stata considerata l’unica democrazia in tutto il medio oriente, abbia reagito con una certa perplessità alla “primavera araba” ed alle sue implicazioni di maggior apertura democratica. Ma le profonde trasformazioni che stanno avendo luogo nella regione, ed in particolare la complessa transizione in corso in Egitto, costringono Tel Aviv a ripensare dalle fondamenta tutto il sistema di alleanze costruito faticosamente in decenni. L‘Egitto del futuro confermerà il Trattato di pace con Israele, e se si, a quali condizioni? Che ruolo assumeranno i movimenti islamisti, ed in particolare i Fratelli Musulmani, e che conseguenze ciò avrà su Hamas e la striscia di Gaza? Anche la Siria, certamente non considerata favorevolmente da Israele, è investita da profonde tensioni, che potrebbero persino rendere ancora più difficile il rapporto tra Tel Aviv e Damasco. La Giordania, che ospita centinaia di migliaia di profughi palestinesi, è un altro fronte che potrebbe aprirsi. I rapporti tra Israele e la Turchia, buoni per diversi anni, si sono raffreddati dopo l’incidente della Mavi Marmara (la nave turca che, di questi tempi nel 2010, portava aiuti a Gaza, assaltata da incursori israeliani, con diverse vittime a bordo). Insomma, strategicamente le sfide per Israele potrebbero divenire molto impegnative. D’altra parte, pensare che i mutamenti strutturali in atto lascino fuori dal gioco il nodo cruciale del Medio Oriente, e cioè l’irrisolta questione palestinese, è una pura illusione. Da parte palestinese, costatato il totale immobilismo nei negoziati bilaterali, e considerato che la politica degli insediamenti israeliani illegali prosegue inalterata, si tenta ora di giocare la carta delle Nazioni Unite. In ipotesi, una risoluzione dell’Assemblea Generale dovrebbe, in settembre, dichiarare la “nascita” dello Stato palestinese. Una mossa puramente politica, visto che, in ogni caso, sarebbero necessari negoziati diretti tra le parti perché l’auspicio si trasformi in realtà. Ma anche Israele dovrebbe rendersi conto che la paralisi politica in questo momento non paga. La storia si è rimessa in marcia in Medio Oriente, e tutti sono chiamati a indirizzarla verso esiti di pace.