[Marxism] Chomsky: Israel and American Oil Imperialism

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

RRUBINELLI WROTE:

> I retained reading your post that said: " The whole frigging world knows
> that making the Middle >East safe for the zionist project was a major
> precipitating factor of the March 2003 invasion."

> That claim is mistaken:  the whole world doesn't think that, "making the
> Middle East safe
> for the zionist project," was a major precipitating factor of the March
> 2003 decision," and if you think it was, you're wrong.  I think the
> precipitating factors are to be found in the economics of capital.


http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/197703--.htm

Oil Imperialism and the US-Israel Relationship
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Roger Hurwitz, David Woolf & Sherman Teichman
Leviathan, 1:1-3, Spring, 1977, pp. 6-9, 86 [March, 1977]

......................................................................

QUESTION: At the moment, the parochial interests of the oil companies appear
to involve a commitment to political accommodation in the Middle East.

CHOMSKY: Yes, that's true. They are pressing very hard -- privately,
publicly, anyway they can -- to persuade the U.S. government to take an
"even-handed stand," a code word for support of a two-state solution on the
'67 borders. For years the oil companies have been pressing for this
solution, on their own and through the Saudi Arabian government, but the
U.S. government has ignored the pressure. My speculation is that the U.S.
regards the current situation as extremely favorable to their long-term
interests. The tension, the high level of armaments, the military
confrontation, are favorable, and the strength of Israel and Iran poses a
strong military threat to independent action on the part of the
oil-producing powers. It's an extremely dangerous policy, but that's the way
it is.

That's one view, which has been held by virtually everyone. It seems to have
been Kissinger's view, for example.

QUESTION: Were there different views?

CHOMSKY: There were sharp differences in outlook between individuals. Many
are hard to identify because they don't speak out much, but we can compare,
for example, the views of Secretaries of State William Rogers and Kissinger.
Rogers' view was that there should be a political settlement, meaning
something like returning to the June '67 borders, with a Palestinian state
on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and various other conditions of
demilitarization and national guarantees. Let's call that a "two-state
settlement." When Kissinger took control of Middle East policy in the Fall
of 1970 (according to his testimony), there was an abrupt switch in official
American policy, from Rogers plan rhetoric to Kissinger rhetoric. Under
Kissinger's initiative, the United States by late 1970 abandoned even a
rhetorical commitment to a political settlement and was clearly supporting a
very different program, namely, the Israeli program of developing and
ultimately annexing substantial parts of the occupied territories, a policy
that led directly to the October 1973 war.

Israel's development policies as well as numerous official and semi-official
pronouncements make it clear that the goal is to realize the so-called
"Allon Plan," which would integrate into Israel the Golan Heights, the Gaza
Strip, parts of Northeastern Sinai with a strip of the Sinai extending to
Sharm El-Sheikh (Israeli Ophira), the Jordan valley, a large area around
Jerusalem, and substantial other parts of the West Bank, excluding areas of
Arab population concentration. The latter areas would be left under local or
Jordanian civil administration and Israeli military control, thus
alleviating what is referred to in Israel as "the demographic problem,"
namely, the problem of incorporating a large Arab population into a Jewish
state, while still facilitating the flow of organized Arab workers into
Israel as a cheap labor force.

The real choices are between political accommodation and military
confrontation. The American government is split over the question. Consider
someone like Edward Sheehan. My suspicion is that Edward Sheehan speaks for
the CIA. I'm told he was the political officer in the Egyptian embassy in
the 1950s, which is usually a CIA post, and I suspect that he speaks from a
point of view that exists in the "intelligence community," favoring
political accommodation. A political settlement is a perfectly satisfactory
fall-back position for American imperialism. It would probably cut down the
conflict in the region, at least the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So here are two easily crystallized positions, both of them being realistic
options for the region. The U.S. government has consistently supported the
first, Israeli occupation, which is essentially a drift toward the Allon
Plan. That would leave Israel, from a superficial point of view, in a very
powerful position. In fact, I think it would leave Israel in a very
precarious position because the military confrontations are very dangerous
and very damaging internally. But if you add up the guns, Israel is in a
very strong short-term position, and could be instrumental in U.S.
domination of the Middle East. The U.S. government doesn't care about the
long-term consequences -- whether Israel exists or fails to exist. What they
care about is that the U.S. dominate the region as long as it's an important
region in world affairs.

Anyone who didn't hold that position simply couldn't get near the center of
government because it's just too crucial for American capitalism. The Middle
East oil reserves are, by a very large margin, the largest and the cheapest
energy resources in the world, and whoever has control over them runs a good
part of the world.

____________________________________________________________________

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0423/p11s01-coop.htm

An old Israel-Iraq oil line ... reopening?
By John K. Cooley

April 23, 2003 edition


ATHENS - Nothing could be better designed to undermine the coalition's
promise that Iraq's oil should benefit its own people than Israel's
proclaimed wish to "reopen" a long-unused pipeline from Iraq's Kirkuk oil
fields to Israel's Mediterranean port of Haifa.

Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky was quoted in a
March 31 Ha'aretz article saying that Israeli and Jordanian officials would
soon meet to discuss reviving the line. Built by the British in the 1940s,
the line crossed west from Iraq through Jordan to British-ruled Palestine
(today's Israel). Upon the 1948 birth of Israel and the immediate eruption
of war with Iraq, Jordan and other Arab neighbors forced its shutdown and
the diversion of Iraqi oil through a branch line to Syria.

Arabs reacted with predictable fury to Mr. Paritzky's suggestion that the
oil of a post- Hussein Iraq could flow to the Jewish state, to be consumed
or marketed from there. Jordan's information minister instantly declared the
story about Israel-Jordan meetings "devoid of truth," because Jordan's
"relations with Israel are now very cold."

Despite the wishful thinking among President Bush's neoconservative and
pro-Israel advisers, a post-Hussein Iraq is unlikely voluntarily to warm to
Mr. Sharon's government. Since 1948, Israel and Iraq have been implacable
foes. Unlike Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, Iraq has never been willing even to
discuss an armistice with Israel, let alone a peace accord like those Israel
signed with Egypt and Jordan - this despite some wishful mediation attempts
by US and other Western business interests during Saddam Hussein's
presidency.

Technically, Baghdad has been in a continuous state of war with Israel since
1948. It sent armies to fight Israel in 1948 and 1967, and to back up
Syria's defense of Damascus in the October 1973 war. It has supported
several Palestinian guerrilla and terrorist organizations, and during the
current Palestinian intifada, Hussein subsidized families of Palestinian
suicide bombers and other activists. Israeli officials have been rejoicing
over the US-led war coalition's elimination of Iraq as a principal strategic
foe of the Jewish state.

Nevertheless, the authoritative Cyprus oil journal Middle East Economic
Survey (MEES) reports that the Washington hawks may insist that the next
Iraqi government rebuild the Kirkuk-Haifa oil line, probably with major US
firms. Walid Khaddouri, the MEES editor, explains that the idea actually
involves building a whole new pipeline because the old one has been
"cannibalized" and dismantled over the years, leaving no more than its old
route traced on maps. This would add at least a billion dollars more to
postwar financial burdens.

The idea is economically tempting for Israel and some of its friends,
especially those whose firms might profit from such a project. Oil-poor
Israel, MEES reports, wants high-quality Kirkuk crude oil for its Haifa
refinery. Israeli refineries currently use Russian, West African, Egyptian,
and other crude oils.

Politically, the scheme is a potential bomb. Its implementation could ignite
a new explosion in the chain of reactions to the US invasion and occupation
of Iraq, now beginning to reverberate throughout the troubled Middle East.

? John K. Cooley is an American author and former Monitor correspondent who
has covered the Middle East and North Africa for more than 40 years.

___________________________________________________________
http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_IraqiOilForIsrael(110503).html

Iraqi oil for Israel


The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (8/25/03) published a report confirming that
the war in Iraq was very much about oil. The U.S. Defense Department sent a
telegram to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on the possibility of pumping oil
from U.S.-occupied Iraq to Israel, A "senior Pentagon official" has sent a
telegram to a "top Foreign Ministry official" on the cost estimate for
repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. Americans
are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and
Israel." The new pipeline would take oil from the oil-rich Iraqi northern
area of Kirkuk, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, transport it
via Mosul to Jordan and then to Israel. After the end of the British
mandate, the 1948 war and the creation of Israel, Iraq stopped the flow of
oil to Haifa and the pipeline, only 8 inches in diameter, fell into
disrepair since then.

A recent research by the Israeli National Infrastructure Ministry put the
construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa at some
400,000 dollars per kilometer. Israeli National Infrastructure Minister
Yosef Paritzky vowed to discuss the issue with the U.S. secretary of energy
during his envisaged visit to Washington He asserted that the whole project
depends on Jordan's consent, adding that the kingdom would receive a transit
fee for allowing the oil to flow through its territory. Paritzky believes
restarting the pipeline could reduce Israel's fuel costs by 25 percent and
turn Haifa into "the Rotterdam of the Middle East." Israeli Premier Ariel
Sharon's government "views the pipeline to Haifa as a 'bonus' the U.S. could
give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led
campaign in Iraq,"

Turkey is angry. At present, Iraqi oil is being shipped via Turkey to a
small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border. Ankara, which considers the
transit fee it collects an important source of revenue, has warned Israel it
would regard the talked-about Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline as "a serious blow
to Turkish-Israeli relations." Haaretz quoted sources as saying reports
about the alternative pipeline are part of an American "attempt to apply
pressure on Turkey" which had opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and is
still reluctant to commit troops to the neighboring country to ease the
burden on American forces.

_________________________________________________________________

See also:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED04Ak01.html

In the pipeline: More regime change
By Hooman Peimani

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