Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni a deal to sell Rome Israeli gas for a lower price in return for recognizing Israel’s annexation of Eastern Jerusalem, declaring Jerusalem the unified capital of Israel, and moving its embassy from Tel Aviv.
“I believe the time has come for Rome to recognize Jerusalem as the ancestral capital of the Jewish people for three thousand years, as the United States did with a gesture of great friendship,” Netanyahu told Meloni in Rome.
“We are already cooperating in gas with your national company (energy giant ENI) but we want to expand it,” he told Italian Enterprise Minister Adolfo Urso.
“I think we should look very carefully and quickly at the possibility of adding an LNG facility, perhaps in Cyprus, to increase Israel’s export capacities of gas to Italy, and from Italy to Europe.”
“I think [gas] is a strategic need of Italy and Europe, and Israel is prepared to do more with you for that end,” said Netanyahu.
Urso welcomed his comments, saying: “Italy aims to become the European gas hub and Israel must be the point of strength for gas production.”
Italy - like many other European countries - has been working to break its reliance on Russian gas since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, according to Urso.
Other options to bring Israeli gas to Europe include the EastMed project, the construction of a largely underwater pipeline nearly 1,900 kilometers long, to connect Israel’s offshore gas fields with southern Europe through Cyprus and Greece.
The gas would then be transported via the Poseidon pipeline. But the six-billion-euro project is only expected to be up and running sometime between 2025 and 2027.
Israel began producing and exporting gas after discovering several reservoirs off its coast in the early 2010s. But it lacks a gas pipeline to connect its drilling platforms in the Mediterranean to southern Europe.
“I would like to see more economic cooperation… and I believe closer interactions with your companies will be good for both of us,” Netanyahu said in an interview on Thursday with la Repubblica.
He added, “And we have natural gas: we have plenty of it and I would like to talk about how to bring it to Italy to support its economic growth.”
Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Berlin from Wednesday to Friday where he would meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
