In a different world
Insight can be found in strange places.
If you check out the Energy Information Administration’s country reports you can easily learn things the media has never grasped.
Here, in the report for the Eastern Mediterranean, are facts that frighten but also give hope.
Palestine obtains all its electricity from Israel. The only diesel-fired power plant in Gaza was bombed in July 2006 by the Israelis. Jordan imports oil and has been hurt by high oil prices of late. Lebanon imports electricity from Syria. Israel has almost no oil reserves and not a single nuclear power plant. Israel imports oil from Egypt, and of late, from Russia and the Caspian. Israel has an unused pipeline that was originally built to transport oil from Iran.
Each of these connections is a risk of instability – and a chance for interdependence. In a slightly different world bombing Gaza’s power would have cost Israel money; disrupting the Palestinians would have reduced economic output in Jerusalem and blowing up houses in Lebanon would have reduced the profits of insurance companies and power companies in Tel Aviv.
In that world, the tight interdependencies of the economic sectors of oil, energy, water, food, and even the intellect would be constant reminders that destruction of one country leads to pain in another.
But we don’t live in that world.