Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil

US discusses plan to pump fuel to its regional ally and solve energy headache at a stroke

Ed Vuillamy in Washington
Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer

Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.
The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.

Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke.

It would also create an end less and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia - a keystone of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001.

Until 1948, the pipeline ran from the Kurdish-controlled city of Mosul to the Israeli port of Haifa, on its northern Mediterranean coast.

The revival of the pipeline was first discussed openly by the Israeli Minister for National Infrastructures, Joseph Paritzky, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz .

The paper quotes Paritzky as saying that the pipeline would cut Israel's energy bill drastically - probably by more than 25 per cent - since the country is currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia.

US intelligence sources confirmed to The Observer that the project has been discussed. One former senior CIA official said: 'It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving this administration [of President George W. Bush] and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy supply as well as that of the United States.

'The Haifa pipeline was something that existed, was resurrected as a dream and is now a viable project - albeit with a lot of building to do.'

The editor-in-chief of the Middle East Economic Review , Walid Khadduri, says in the current issue of Jane's Foreign Report that 'there's not a metre of it left, at least in Arab territory' [...]

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Cameraman Shot and Killed in West Bank
The Guardian, April 19, 2003 1:19 PM


NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - An Israeli soldier shot and killed a cameraman with Associated Press Television News who was covering a skirmish between troops and rock-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday, witnesses said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment but said it was looking into the shooting.

Nazeh Darwazeh, 45, was filming clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians that began early Saturday. Doctors said Darwazeh died of a bullet wound to the head.

Video footage taken by a Reuters cameraman showed young Palestinian men running up an alley toward a parked armored personnel carrier. After they threw rocks at the vehicle, troops fired shots. Witnesses said several firebombs were thrown toward the vehicle, and later footage showed a small area in the back of it on fire.

The footage then showed a man with a rifle in green combat fatigues kneeling down between the armored personnel carrier and the wall of a house at the top of the alley. Witnesses identified the man as an Israeli soldier.

The footage showed him pointing his weapon toward the journalists. Seconds later, Darwazeh was seen lying in a doorway in a pool of blood. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 6:23 am