分类： politics

Israel’s latest push for natural gas exploration off the coast of the Gaza Strip has sparked sharp criticism from Palestinian rights organizations and environmental campaigners, who argue the initiative violates international law, undermines Palestinian sovereignty, and poses unnecessary threats to marine ecosystems and the global climate.

In February 2024, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen formally approved the country’s fifth round of offshore gas licensing in the Mediterranean Sea. Per official documentation from Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, the auction opens up roughly 8,600 square kilometers of Mediterranean waters for exploration, split across six distinct exploration blocks.

Adalah, a Haifa-based legal organization that advocates for Palestinian rights, has revealed that two of these six blocks sit within internationally recognized Palestinian maritime territory off Gaza’s shore. This is not the first time Israeli licensing rounds have encroached on Palestinian waters: the group notes that the previous offshore auction also extended into waters claimed by the State of Palestine.

Last month, Adalah submitted an official letter to both Cohen and Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara challenging the legality of the new licensing round. The correspondence, which has been shared with independent news outlet Middle East Eye, argues that the plan is unlawful because approximately 1,000 square kilometers of the proposed exploration area lies in waters over which Palestine claims full sovereignty. Adalah emphasizes that Israel holds no legal authority to conduct resource activities in these Palestinian maritime areas, noting that any exploration here would violate both Israeli domestic legislation and binding international law.

The organization rejects Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territories as a valid justification for denying the inherent sovereign rights of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian people. It further points out that the drilling plans directly contradict the 1993 Oslo Accords, the landmark agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization that laid out frameworks for Palestinian self-governance in occupied territories. Under international humanitarian law, Adalah notes, occupying powers are explicitly prohibited from exploiting natural resources in occupied territories for their own benefit—a rule the new exploration plan clearly violates.

Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director, framed the gas plans as an inseparable component of a broader accelerating Israeli policy aimed at formalizing annexation and permanent control over all Palestinian land and natural resources. “This is not merely a violation of international law,” Bishara explained in a public statement. “It is a deliberate attempt to entrench permanent Israeli control over Palestinian territory and resources, directly undermining the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination.”

To date, the Israeli energy ministry has not publicly released the results of the licensing round since the tender was first announced, and Middle East Eye’s request for comment on the allegations went unanswered as of the original publication of this report.

Adalah’s investigation also connects the new exploration round to a long-standing pattern of Israeli restrictions that have systematically denied Palestinian access to their own offshore energy resources. Since the early 2000s, Israel has blocked the Palestinian Authority from developing the Gaza Marine gas field, which independent experts estimate holds up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Development of this field would generate an estimated $4 billion in revenue for the Palestinian Authority, according to industry projections. The organization also notes that Israel already exports billions of dollars worth of natural gas to Egypt via the Ashkelon-Arish pipeline, which traverses Palestinian maritime territory without any consent from Palestinian authorities.

Joining the condemnation are Israeli environmental advocates, who warn that the exploration plan carries severe ecological risks and runs counter to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. Yuval Arbel, a policy specialist with the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli group focused on protecting marine and freshwater resources, argues that Israel already holds sufficient domestic gas reserves to meet all its current and future energy needs. “There is no justification for expanding gas production,” Arbel told Middle East Eye. “Our policy priority should be accelerating the transition to renewable energy, not opening new fossil fuel exploration blocks.”

Arbel warned that offshore drilling carries inherent major risks to delicate Mediterranean marine ecosystems, and that expanded gas production will only worsen climate change by increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. He noted that while the energy ministry justifies new exploration on the grounds that renewables alone cannot meet future Israeli energy demand, the policy is primarily driven by the pursuit of short-term profit. “Even if extraction moves forward, production will not begin for another six to 10 years,” Arbel pointed out. “No one can accurately predict what global gas demand will look like in 10 or 15 years. There is no tangible public benefit for Israel in extracting more gas—this is solely about generating extra export revenue for the state.”

These claims are backed by recent official revenue figures: in 2024, the Israeli energy ministry reported record revenues from domestic gas production, with the state collecting 2.3 billion shekels (roughly $640 million) in royalties, an increase of more than 8% from the previous year. Israel’s offshore gas sector has been a major source of state revenue since it was privatized in 2015, and currently hosts operations from a range of international and domestic energy firms, including UK-based Energean and U.S. energy giant Chevron. Just one year prior, BP and Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy firm SOCAR won bids in Israel’s fourth licensing round, which was also widely criticized for violating Palestinian maritime sovereignty.

Arbel emphasized that even a low probability of a catastrophic oil or gas spill is unacceptable given the irreversible damage it would cause to Gaza’s and Israel’s Mediterranean coastlines. “The potential damage from drilling is so severe that even a small risk of disaster is not worth taking,” he said.

Over the past decade, natural gas has become Israel’s dominant source of electricity generation, displacing coal as the country’s top fuel. Knesset data shows that gas accounted for just 49% of Israeli electricity production in 2014; a decade later, that share has jumped to more than 70%, with coal and renewable energy each contributing roughly 14% of total generation.

The gas exploration plan off Gaza aligns with a broader aggressive policy agenda pursued by Minister Cohen since he took office in 2024, which centers on consolidating Israeli control over occupied Palestinian territories in line with demands from the Israeli settler movement. Just last week, Cohen announced plans to expand natural gas infrastructure into the occupied West Bank, explicitly framing the move as an exercise in de facto Israeli sovereignty. The project will extend Mediterranean gas supplies to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and earlier this week Cohen told Israeli outlet Channel 14 News that new power plants and gas pipelines across the West Bank are “the economic key on the path to one million settlers” living in the occupied territory.

The push for new fossil fuel exploration comes as Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza has already had extreme climate and energy impacts. Research published last year by the Social Science Research Network found that the carbon footprint generated in the first 15 months of military operations in Gaza exceeded the total annual emissions of more than 100 countries combined. Since October 2023, Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s already fragile energy infrastructure, leading to near-total nationwide electricity blackouts throughout 2024, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Before the current war, Gaza residents received an average of just 10 hours of electricity per day, with the entire occupied Palestinian territory relying almost entirely on energy supplies from Israel. Pre-war data from the Institute for Palestine Studies shows that Palestinians sourced 87% of their total electricity from Israel, with the remaining 13% coming from Egypt, Jordan, and small-scale local solar generation projects.

The future of Israel’s diplomatic presence in Istanbul has been thrown into uncertainty after the former consulate building failed a mandatory earthquake resilience inspection, forcing Israeli officials to evaluate multiple high-stakes options for reestablishing their mission.

Multiple informed sources speaking to Middle East Eye have confirmed that the multi-story mixed-use plaza that hosted the consulate has been marked for demolition, with a full redevelopment of the site scheduled to unfold over the next several years. The building has operated at partial capacity since October 2023, when Israel withdrew all its diplomatic staff from Turkey over growing security risks.

Early media reports claimed the consulate would remain closed indefinitely due to escalating political tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, but new details reveal that structural and financial barriers — not diplomatic friction — are the primary driving force behind the current uncertainty. While the Israeli government owns portions of the existing building, integrating the strict security and operational specifications required for an Israeli diplomatic mission into the new redevelopment project has presented significant commercial hurdles and unexpected additional expenses.

The structure in question is a multi-level plaza that hosts a wide range of private businesses and commercial office spaces across its floors, classified as a semi-skyscraper under Turkish building regulations, making its planned demolition an uncommon step. Beyond the structural safety issue, the site has already been targeted in a high-profile security incident: in April, two Turkish police officers were injured in an attack on the now-vacant consulate by individuals linked to the Islamic State group.

“Israeli diplomatic facilities have very specific construction and security standards, and the private development leading the redevelopment will almost certainly not be able to meet these requirements because of how expensive they are,” one source familiar with the internal discussions explained. “If Israel wants to retain its consulate on the same plot, it will have to negotiate an agreement with the construction firm and allocate a separate budget to cover the extra costs.”

Even though the Israeli government will retain ownership of its share of the land after redevelopment is complete, sources say a continued consulate presence at the site is highly unlikely. Relocating the entire consulate operation to a new building in Istanbul is also proving to be a prohibitively expensive option, however.

Israeli diplomatic missions require extensive custom security upgrades, including high-level ballistic armor, reinforced structural elements, specialized secure communications cabling, 24/7 monitored surveillance camera systems, and a suite of other protective infrastructure. Independent estimates put the total cost of these upgrades for a new location at roughly $6 million, a figure that has sparked internal debate in Israel over whether the expenditure is justified when bilateral diplomatic relations between the two countries are effectively frozen.

At this stage, Israeli officials have not finalized a path forward. “Israel is currently reviewing all possible options, and no final decision on the matter has been made,” a second official source told Middle East Eye. But a third insider with knowledge of the government’s budget situation noted that no funding has been allocated for a relocation, making a move to a new Istanbul site an unlikely outcome for now.

The uncertainty over the consulate compound other strains on Turkish-Israeli bilateral ties: both countries currently have vacant chief-of-mission posts. Israel’s outgoing ambassador to Turkey, Irit Lillian, will retire from her post at the end of this month, while Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, retired from his role last year and has yet to be replaced.

A groundbreaking ProPublica investigation has uncovered direct White House involvement in pushing through a $620 million Pentagon loan to a small North Carolina rare earth magnet startup connected to Donald Trump Jr., raising serious new questions about cronyism and ethical conflicts within the second Trump administration. When the historic loan was announced one year ago, top defense officials, company leaders, and representatives for the president’s eldest son moved quickly to dismiss public and congressional suspicions of political favoritism. Trump Jr.’s spokesperson stated he had no role in securing the deal, the Pentagon publicly insisted he did not influence the funding decision, and Vulcan Elements’ founder claimed the company received no preferential treatment because of its high-profile ties. But new interviews with multiple anonymous Pentagon officials and a review of internal Defense Department documents obtained by ProPublica tell a different story: the multi-hundred-million-dollar loan request for Vulcan was directly initiated by Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade advisor with close personal ties to Trump Jr.

According to one senior Pentagon official who was not cleared to speak publicly about the internal process, of the dozens of companies competing for Pentagon funding under the critical minerals initiative at the time, the Vulcan deal was the only one directly pushed forward by a top White House presidential aide. Two insiders involved in processing the loan confirmed that after receiving the request from the White House, defense leadership ordered staff to accelerate the review and approval process at an unprecedented pace. To meet the rushed timeline, Pentagon teams worked consecutive late nights, skipping downtime to push the massive loan through in just a matter of weeks, a stark departure from the months-long standard vetting process for comparable funding deals. One source directly involved summed up the internal directive: “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done.”

This revelation marks the first time that a federal agency contract or funding award under the second Trump administration has been directly tied to intentional White House intervention, adding fuel to longstanding allegations that the administration has directed government benefits to companies tied to the Trump family’s personal business interests. The loan itself was framed as part of a critical national security initiative to reduce U.S. dependence on China’s dominant grip on the global rare earth supply chain, a sector that underpins everything from commercial semiconductors to advanced military systems including Tomahawk missile guidance systems and F-35 fighter jet engines.

Roughly three months before the Pentagon made the loan public, Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, acquired an undisclosed stake in Vulcan, a two-year-old startup founded by a Harvard Business School student that had raised less than $10 million in total private funding ahead of the deal. Following the loan announcement, Vulcan’s estimated valuation surged tenfold from roughly $200 million to $2 billion, delivering an immediate windfall to its early investors including 1789 Capital. The investigation also revealed that a second company tied to Trump Jr. — Florida-based drone parts manufacturer Unusual Machines, where he holds a board advisory role and millions in personal equity — is also currently under review for Pentagon funding, following a 2025 defense contract for the firm that already sparked cronyism allegations.

Navarro, who served as Trump’s trade advisor during his first term and has built an extremely close personal relationship with Trump Jr. in recent years, has not responded to multiple requests for comment from ProPublica. Trump Jr. has previously stated he does not discuss his portfolio investments with administration officials and never spoke with Navarro about the Vulcan deal, claiming he had no knowledge of how the funding was approved. 1789 Capital has also denied any role in securing the loan. The White House issued a blanket defense of the process, stating in a formal statement that the administration “is working in the best interest of the American people,” adding that the entire team “is working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump speed.” The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that political connections or outside affiliations play any role in its funding decisions.

The national security context for the loan is broadly supported by policymakers across the aisle: China currently controls nearly all global processing capacity for rare earth elements, a position it has already used to restrict exports to pressure geopolitical rivals, leaving U.S. military supply chains potentially vulnerable. The Office of Strategic Capital, the Pentagon unit that approved the Vulcan loan, was originally created under the Biden administration to support private-sector development of domestic rare earth capacity, with an initial $1 billion in lending authority. After taking office for a second term, the Trump administration dramatically expanded the office’s authority to $200 billion in total lending, overhauled its operating structure, and replaced the original slow, open application process with a model that relies heavily on the personal networks of new leadership drawn from Wall Street to source deals.

The Vulcan loan has drawn intense bipartisan criticism from ethics experts and congressional Democrats. Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration, called the intervention a clear abuse of power. “This is our money they’re spending,” Painter said. “This is corruption we pay for.” A group of Senate Democrats has demanded the Pentagon release a full accounting of Vulcan’s selection process, warning that the Trump family’s conflicts of interest could be “resulting in a waste of taxpayer dollars and a threat to national security.” The Pentagon’s response to the request did not address how Vulcan was selected, only addressing conflict of interest protocols for its own employees, not the president’s family. House Democrats attempted to subpoena Trump Jr. to testify about the deal earlier this year, but the effort was blocked by Republican lawmakers.

For other companies seeking funding from the revamped Office of Strategic Capital, the incident has reinforced a widespread perception that access depends on personal connections to the Trump circle rather than open competition. Brodie Sutherland, CEO of Nevada-based tungsten miner Patriot Critical Minerals, told ProPublica his firm hired a lobbyist with existing ties to the office to secure a meeting, adding, “Whether you need someone on the inside track to get it across the line I don’t know. We’re hopeful you don’t need to be chums with Trump Jr. to get a project across.” Defense Department records show Patriot Critical Minerals was already rejected for a loan, though the agency did not provide a reason for the denial. Sutherland said he still holds out hope for future funding.

New details have emerged of the full scope of security concerns that prompted the UK government’s official vetting body to reject security clearance for Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former British cabinet minister who was forced to step down as UK ambassador to the United States just months after taking the post.

Mandelson’s short tenure in Washington ended in September 2024, when he resigned after public revelations of his long-standing close personal ties to deceased American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this year, he was stripped of his lifetime peerage in the House of Lords over the scandal. The controversy has plagued Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration, which has faced relentless public and political scrutiny over its 2024 decision to appoint Mandelson to one of the UK’s most high-profile diplomatic postings, despite pre-existing concerns about his associations.

It was already confirmed earlier this year that the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), the national agency responsible for assessing security clearance for senior public roles, had formally concluded Mandelson should be denied clearance. However, the permanent secretary at the UK Foreign Office overruled that finding and approved the clearance anyway, clearing the way for his appointment.

In its latest reporting published Wednesday, The Guardian has exposed new, specific connections flagged by UKSV that raised red flags for vetters, including ties to senior figures across Israel, China, and Russia that created unacceptable national security risks.

Among the Israeli connections flagged was a regular contact between Mandelson and Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence. Hayman led the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate from 2018 to 2021, and currently serves as director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INNS), a leading Tel Aviv-based think tank. Hayman has previously publicly acknowledged that during his tenure as intelligence chief, Israeli officials pushed the United States to carry out the 2020 drone assassination of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

UKSV’s assessment found Mandelson and Hayman communicated once every two months. The INNS pushed back on the characterization of the relationship in a statement to The Guardian, saying Hayman has “no personal connection or familiarity whatsoever” with Mandelson, and noting that Mandelson participated in the think tank’s external advisory framework before his ambassadorial appointment.

Vetting officials also flagged a separate financial tie: Mandelson took out a £1 million loan from an unnamed business figure to purchase shares in Moon Active, an Israeli gaming firm best known for developing the globally popular mobile game Coin Master. Additional links to Israeli figures, connected through Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, have also previously come to light. Reporting from Middle East Eye in February 2025 revealed that in 2013, Epstein asked former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to assign Mandelson to lead the sale of Paz Oil Company, Israel’s largest fuel provider. That same year, Mandelson also reached out to Epstein to request that Epstein consult Barak for input on Israeli political consultant Asaf Eisin.

Beyond Israeli connections, UKSV’s report also highlighted problematic associations with senior figures from both China and Russia that created security concerns. One Chinese figure flagged was Lan Fo’an, China’s current Minister of Finance, who reportedly held several meetings with Mandelson each year. Lan has also met separately with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves over the past two years, a fact that has prompted new questions about whether Mandelson, while serving as ambassador, played any unreported role in arranging or facilitating those meetings.

On the Russian side, UKSV reiterated long-documented concerns over Mandelson’s long-standing close friendship with sanctioned Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Earlier this year, it was revealed that as far back as 2010, Mandelson asked Deripaska to help Epstein secure a Russian visa to visit Moscow, a connection that raised further red flags for vetters.

The new revelations come as Starmer’s government faces growing parliamentary pressure to release all official documents related to Mandelson’s appointment. Earlier this month, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee accused the government of intentionally withholding key relevant records, despite a formal parliamentary motion ordering the full release of the files. A new batch of documents related to the Mandelson appointment is scheduled to be declassified and released next month.

In a statement issued Thursday, a government spokesperson reiterated that the administration is “committed to complying” with the parliamentary motion “in full.”

A weeks-long pause on punitive measures against the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese has come to an abrupt end, after a federal appeals court granted the US government’s request to temporarily suspend a lower court ruling that had blocked the sanctions on First Amendment grounds. The restoration of the sanctions was formally confirmed in an official notice published to the US Treasury Department’s website this Wednesday.

The origins of the dispute stretch back to July 2024, when the Donald Trump administration first placed Albanese on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. The designation came just weeks after the independent UN expert released a sharply critical report that documented more than 60 companies—including major U.S.-based technology giants Google, Amazon and Microsoft—it accused of contributing to what Albanese framed as the shift of Israel’s occupation economy into a system enabling genocide in Palestinian territories. The report called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and national judicial bodies around the world to open investigations and pursue criminal prosecutions against implicated company executives and corporate entities, a recommendation that directly prompted the Trump administration’s sanction action.

Since the designation was first imposed, Albanese has faced sweeping restrictions: she is barred from entering the United States, all of her assets located within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, and she has been cut off from the global financial system, unable to carry out even routine daily transactions, she told Middle East Eye in an earlier interview.

In February 2025, Albanese’s family launched a legal challenge to the sanctions after the UN declined to waive her official diplomatic immunity, which prevented her from filing suit in her own name. The plaintiffs were her husband Massimiliano Cali, a senior World Bank economist, and the couple’s U.S.-born daughter, a U.S. citizen. They argued that the penalties were a direct punishment for Albanese’s public criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and that the measures had unnecessarily disrupted the family’s ability to access basic financial services. On May 13, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon sided with the family, issuing a broad temporary injunction that blocked enforcement of the entire sanction designation.

Leon ruled that the sanctions were highly likely to violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as they explicitly targeted Albanese for the content of her protected speech. “Protecting the freedom of speech is always in the public interest,” Leon wrote in his opinion. He further noted that Albanese’s recommendations to the ICC carried no legally binding weight, and amounted to nothing more than the expression of an expert opinion, not actionable conduct that would justify punitive measures. Rejecting the federal government’s request to narrow the ruling to only apply to Albanese’s family members, Leon ordered the full designation set aside, opening a brief window where the sanctions were not in effect. Following that ruling, the State Department confirmed it had complied with the order by temporarily removing Albanese from the SDN list, but stressed the move did not represent a shift in policy, and that it would pursue an appeal to restore the designation.

Last Friday, that appeal yielded an early victory for the government: a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a temporary administrative stay of Leon’s injunction, clearing the way for the sanctions to be put back in place immediately. The appeals court emphasized that its procedural order was not a judgment on the underlying merits of the government’s appeal, but merely intended to preserve the status quo while the panel considers the broader request to keep the lower court ruling on hold throughout the duration of the appeals process. The court has not yet announced a timeline for ruling on the government’s full motion for a stay pending appeal.

As a result of the stay, Albanese has been formally returned to the Treasury Department’s SDN list. The designation once again bars any U.S. person or entity from engaging in financial transactions with her, restores her exclusion from the global financial system, and extends a travel ban that bars Albanese and her immediate family members from entering the United States.

In its appeal arguments, the Department of Justice has argued that as an Italian citizen who has not resided in the United States for roughly a decade, and whose critical speech took place outside U.S. borders, Albanese falls outside the protections of the U.S. Constitution. The government’s legal motion describes Leon’s injunction as “legally indefensible and grossly overbroad,” warning that if the ruling is allowed to stand, it will cause lasting damage to core U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.

Albanese is not the only prominent figure to face U.S. sanctions over work investigating alleged international crimes in occupied Palestinian territories. Since the start of 2025, the Trump administration has already sanctioned ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, his deputy prosecutors, and eight ICC judges over the court’s investigations into war crimes committed in occupied Palestine and Afghanistan. Three Palestinian non-governmental organizations that have collaborated with the ICC to submit evidence of alleged crimes by Israeli officials have also been placed under U.S. sanctions.