Is Israel The New Panama?
Perhaps a great act is underway.
Why does the US intervene in foreign conflicts? Follow the money! Of course! More than $524 billion of natural gas and oil deposits enrich the Levant Basin according to the latest United Nations analysis.1 Ample motivation for US intervention, we could stop there. What if we don’t? As Stephen Kinzer famously reminds us: the news is about what is happening right now. What is just as important is what happened yesterday, and what is likely to happen tomorrow.
Let’s talk about yesterday.
It is 1955. The US and Britain plan to fund the construction of the Asgwan dam in Egypt. Things change when the US suspects Egypt is cozying up to Russia. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, pens a letter to the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Dulles writes: the UK and US will no longer fund the dam construction. Typical Cold War Era foreign policy.
President Nasser retaliates, he announces the Suez Canal will be nationalized. An asset for an asset. The predominantly French and British stakeholders would lose control of the canal. Nasser makes a reasonable case: the canal is in Egypt, and Egyptian labor dredged it.
Britain and France send troops to seize the canal. Gaining control of strategic assets, like major trade routes and resource deposits, has been an insatiable compulsion for the tentacle-like arms of imperial foreign policy. Britain and France pursue regaining the canal with an unexpected ally: Israel. Israeli forces seize Gaza and the Sinai peninsula during the same operation–which will make sense soon.
Shortly after, a United Nations resolution expels the French, British, and Israeli troops from the Egyptian Territory. Inconvenient for the west considering 12% of the world's cargo passes through the Suez Canal. Not only do ships infamously get stuck in the canal, suggesting it fails to meet the demands of modern global trade, the canal is no longer controlled by the west. Two problems with one solution: a new canal. Located just 100 miles from the Suez Canal is the Negev Desert.
It is 1963, a few years after the Suez Crisis, and the US Department of Energy sponsors a covert plan. The subject? Using nuclear explosives for the excavation of a sea-level canal across the Negev desert, connecting the mediterranean to the gulf of Agaba. An alternative to the Suez.
Images of the document below, thanks to a 1996 declassification.2
Britain, France, and Israel seizing the Suez Canal, Sinai Peninsula, and Gaza, simultaneously executes plan A and plan B. A) Take back control of the current usable passage. B) Take control of the population living on the land where the new canal will be built. As originally planned in 1963 (shown below), the canal is to pass through the Negev Desert, directly through Gaza.
A close ally (Israel) controlling and ultimately eliminating the Gazan population along this route would make the US dredging a canal easier, no?
Surely, the 1963 plan requires the cooperation of Israel. So kind of them not to leave us to wonder! Israeli officials affirmed the legitimacy of the leaked plan to forcibly remove 2.3 million Gazans to Egypt. Israel assures us, this is simply a proposal. With over 20,000 Gazans killed and over 1.7 million forcibly displaced, it seems the plan is halfway done, despite the claim it was never set in motion.
This would not be the first time the United States supports mass destruction, breaking of international law, and loss of human life–all for a canal. The idea of a canal through Central and Latin America had been around for centuries when Roosevelt came into office. Initially, it was to be built across Nicaragua, which would have been logistically easier but politically unfeasible. The next best bet was Colombia. Panama was a part of Colombia, until 1903.
So, it is 1903. The US decides to foment a rebellion in the Panama territory, convincing the population to declare independence. Using the might of the US military to blockade Panama, and immediately recognize the new government as legitimate, the US succeeds in state building. Panama kindly gives control of the canal to the United States. Capitalist revolution, the most infamous American-made export!
Surely, the US military would need a presence on the ground in the Negev Desert, as they did in Panama, if they are dredging another canal.
Perhaps this is why the US is secretly expanding a military base in the Negev Desert, “Site 512.” According to a contract announcement by the Pentagon on August 2nd, $35.8 million has been allocated to construct facilities for over 1000 troops. Thanks to keen reporting by the Intercept, this is not a secret despite the deliberate lack of publicity around Site 512.3 So, as Gaza is carpet bombed, facilities for US troops are being built along the proposed canal route.
This all sounds terribly extralegal, though, does it not?
Upon Theodore Roosevelt being accused of what he had done in Panama: dividing a nation in half, creating widespread regional conflict, all for greater global economic control, he held a cabinet meeting. He asked his attorney general if there is a case to be made against him, Mr. William Henry Moody replies, “Mr. President, let us not allow such a great act to be tainted by any shadow of legality.” 4
Perhaps great acts such as this are underway.
Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag, 2017. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250159687/thetrueflag