On November 24th Hurriyet published an article by Murat Yetkin headlined 'New wars possible, new borders too.' "Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan warned about a sectarian and ethnic-based civil war in Iraq on Nov. 22 and pointed to energy wars as the main motivation behind it. The next day, Iraq’s Shiite-origin Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, sent a strong “Not if you trigger it” reply to Erdoğan, only to be snubbed as “delusional” by the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Almost simultaneously, al-Maliki released a photo showing the deployment of Iraqi troops to Tuzhurmatu in order to face Kurds piling up along the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) borders, despite still being part of Iraq on paper," the article begins.
"But has there been any conflict in Iraq or generally in the greater Middle East in the last hundred years which was not related to energy interests?" thea uthor writes. "Iraq itself, as a country, is one of the end results of the First World War, an outcome of sharing the oil fields of Mesopotamia and the Basra basin as carved out of the dismantling of the Turkish Empire, thanks to the British Empire. That was the first generation of energy wars in the region."
"What is happening in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Israel could be part of that, a hundred years after the start of it. Whenever there have been energy fights, there has been either regime or border changes, or both, in this part of the world. And there is no reason to believe that this time it is going to be different," the author concludes.
The Jerusalem Post published an article entitled 'Supplying Gaza.' "Few are aware that just as the intense rocketing of Israel’s metropolitan areas was ramped up, the Kerem Shalom crossing to the Gaza Strip was reopened early last week. Trucks laden with foodstuffs and supplies were allowed through to those who were lobbing missiles at Israeli civilians," the article reads.
"Undoubtedly, these consignments didn’t only serve noncombatants but were seized by the combatants and allocated as they saw fit. Now that a cease-fire is in place, this travesty surely should prompt a comprehensive collective rethink among Israelis. Nowhere else in the history of armed conflict was there ever a situation in which a combatant side looked after its mortal enemy’s welfare, fed it, supplied it with essentials and powered it with electricity," the authors say.
"Instead of strengthening those who do their utmost to destroy us, it is high time we quit being suckers. It is also time to disconnect Gazans from our power grid, telephone and communication services (for which, inter alia, they never pay). Maintaining the absurd status quo heaps folly upon folly," they believe.
