“We’re monitoring with deep concern the visits of senior individuals of the Zionist entity to international locations of the area,” says the assertion issued by Hamas within the Gaza Strip final night time, following the journey to Turkey go to by President Isaac Herzog. “These international locations are the Palestinian individuals’s strategic depth. Don’t give a chance to the Zionist entity to penetrate the area and play with the pursuits of our peoples.”
Regardless of the condemnation, that is very reasonable wording as compared with earlier condemnatory statements launched by Hamas, comparable to on Israel’s normalization settlement with the UAE. The language of the assertion clearly signifies the priority on the a part of the Hamas management for its financial destiny, which resides in Turkey. “Globes” has uncovered Hamas’s financial set-up, which facilities on Turkey, and is linked to actual property and funding firms that present finance for the group, together with its terrorist arm. In response to Israeli protection sources, Hamas’s exercise in Turkey isn’t just financial. It directs terrorist assaults from there, together with recruitment of operatives and preparation of the assaults.
Hamas wound up in Turkey after it was thrown out of Saudi Arabia in 2017 and its exercise was curtailed in different international locations of the area below US stress and following its designation as a terrorist group by the US and the EU. Hamas’s financial base in Turkey additionally grew due to the frosty relations and the friction between Ankara and Jerusalem. Relations now seem like warming up once more, nonetheless, and it may be stated with close to certainty that the difficulty of Hamas got here up within the talks between Herzog and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. The query is what Erdo?an, who prior to now despatched “humanitarian” assist to Hamas by means of protest flotillas, will now be ready to do.
One other side of Herzog’s go to to Turkey is power. The EastMed pipeline, deliberate to traverse the Mediterranean from Israel to Europe by way of Greece, Turkey and Italy, may be very a lot wanted, however is caught, amongst different issues due to excessive prices. The choice at current is an current pipeline in Turkey. Theoretically, fuel from Israel, and never simply from Israel, may very well be transported to Europe by way of the Turkish pipeline, and thus assist to cut back Russia’s leverage over northern Europe.
The imaginative and prescient is rather more far reaching, and Israel aspires to mediate within the dispute over Mediterranean fuel between Greece and Cyprus and Turkey. Greece and Cyprus don’t acknowledge financial rights for Turkish Cyprus, and there may be an space for fuel exploration in dispute north of the island. For its half, Turkey contends that the scattered Greek islands give that nation rather more than it really deserves.
There those that would say that that is an particularly utopian imaginative and prescient, given the dangerous blood within the area, and definitely in view of the place of Egypt, Israel’s closest fuel accomplice.
By the way, Israeli fuel has began to achieve Egypt by way of the Jordanian pipeline that traverses that nation from north to south and crosses to Egypt from Aqaba to Sinai. The rise in portions of Israeli fuel exported to Egypt will permit Egypt to ship fuel from its liquefaction crops to Europe.
Printed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on March 10, 2022.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2022.
