Geoeconomics versus geopolitics : gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arab-Israeli conflict

The paper is meant to be one of the voices in the on-going debate on the significance of the geoeconomic approaches that focus on the role of economic processes and phenomena in the international arena. Its aim is to tell if the geoeconomics can enrich the academic debate and understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. By doing so it will try to assess the explanatory power of this approach. The thesis of the paper is that the economic factors play secondary role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the economic relations between its actors are reproducing the political structure of the region. Thus the economic factors should be used in the international relations research as dependent or intervening variables. Testing of the aforementioned research thesis will require presenting the key economic processes and phenomena connected to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The paper has two parts. The first one is an attempt to delineate the possible future research projects on Middle East conflict that would cover its economic dimension. The second part of the paper will focus on the case study of Israel’s approach to the gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Its objective will be to assess the relative significance of economic and political factors in determining this policy.