Will Turkey Foil Plans to Turn Israel and Its Neighbors into Major Suppliers of Natural Gas to Europe?

In 2009, large fields of natural gas were discovered below Israel’s coastal waters; in the subsequent years, researchers concluded that these were part of a massive deposit of gas and petroleum in the eastern Mediterranean, distributed among the territorial waters of Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, and Greece. Egypt and Israel have already begun exploiting these reserves, and Israel in particular is eager to join with Cyprus, Greece, and Italy in a major project—known as the East Med pipeline—that could export these fossil fuels to Europe, thereby relieving the EU of its reliance on Russia. But playing the role of spoiler is Turkey, motivated by its historic conflicts with Greece and Cyprus, its more recent hostility toward Israel, and its growing economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow—which include cooperation in the export of fuel. John Psaropoulos explains:

The key attraction of East Med is stability. It would be a risk-free, intra-EU route carrying committed volumes of gas to Europe for a quarter-century. Europe would in turn be a reliable client, in contrast to cash-poor regional economies [such as Jordan]. “We used to seek out investors in East Med. Now they are seeking us out,” says [Kostas Karayannakos, the executive director of gas supply for Greece’s public gas corporation].

For Karayannakos, the pipeline brings tremendous geopolitical advantages. . . . It is precisely this vision—of a pipeline that circumvents its exclusive economic zone, turns Cypriot energy interests into European energy interests, elevates the importance of Greece in the EU, and offers Greece and Cyprus a leading role in the EU’s relations with the Middle East—that concerns Turkey. Its displeasure has already caused one high-seas standoff. . . .

Turkey is the only country in the eastern Mediterranean that has so far found no proven and probable resources even though, [according to reliable estimates], it has spent at least $560 million on acquiring two seismographic research vessels and a drillship. It is also the only country that hasn’t defined its exclusive economic zone with its neighbors, but disputes theirs.

Read more at Weekly Standard

More about: Cyprus, EU, Greece, Israel & Zionism, Natural Gas, Russia, Turkey

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society