World
editorials •
Ben-Gvir’s gaffe over the Falklands
Netanyahu’s extremist minister has responded to London’s recent initiative against the settlers by attacking the British “occupation” and, by extension, an Israeli company that extracts oil
Photo: ANSA
Sometimes ideologies and animosities take such strange turns that they collapse into contradictions: the Israeli Minister of Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is backing one of the most spectacular sanctions against Israel. He of all people – whose extremism is at the root of many ongoing anti-Israeli boycotts – in a post on X written in Spanish urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognise Argentina’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (known as the Malvinas to the Argentines) and to impose sanctions on Britain for as long as the ‘occupation’ continues: “It is time for the State of Israel to publicly recognise that the Falkland Islands are occupied Argentine territory, which the British are violently wresting from the Argentine people”. Ben-Gvir added that “the British are not content merely with occupying the territory; they are also drilling for oil there and stealing money from the Argentine people”. These remarks come in the wake of Argentine President Javier Milei’s address to the nation, in which he announced that he would be submitting a package of draft legislation to Congress to safeguard sovereignty over the islands.
Milei was particularly critical of the Sea Lion project, which involves extracting crude oil off the coast of the archipelago. “If we do not act, in a few months’ time (the British) will have the material capacity to seize the oil reserves lying beneath our seas,” he had said. Ben-Gvir is responding to the UK’s sanctions against settler settlements in the West Bank. However, 65 per cent of Sea Lion’s shares are held by the Israeli company Navitas Petroleum, compared with 35 per cent held by the British firm Rockhopper. Milei’s government has said it intends to file a criminal complaint against several Navitas subsidiaries, which “allegedly hold licences granted by the illegitimate UK government for the exploration and/or exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Northern Falklands Basin”. And so Ben-Gvir, in a bid to spite London, is backing an attack on Israeli interests.