At the end of 2015 Afek announced that it had found considerable reserves of oil under the Golan.

Claire Bernish explains the U.S. involvement in the Syrian quagmire and how it relates to Afek’s oil exploration in the following article via Activist Post :

Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights region violates international law — thus, Israeli permits granting Afek the ostensible right to perform exploratory tests of a possible “large reservoir” of natural gas and light oil is also illegal.

But in a world where Big Oil remains powerful enough to drive foreign policy of the U.S. empire, this direct violation of the Geneva Convention might not even be worthy of a footnote — except to the people of Syria.

In fact, as The Free Thought Project’s Justin Gardner previously reported, the unsavory character heading Genie Oil is none other than Efraim “Effie” Eitam, an Israeli military commander and former Knesset member who once called for the expulsion of the “cancer” of Arabs from Israel.

“Expel most of the Judea and Samaria Arabs from here,” Eitam arrogantly asserted during a soldier’s memorial service in 2006. “We cannot be with all these Arabs and we cannot give up the land, because we have already seen what they do there. Some of them may be able to stay under certain conditions, but most of them will have to go.”

In addition to the eyebrow-raising cabal of Eitam, Murdoch, Cheney, and Rothschild, Genie Oil and Gas appointed new members to its Strategic Advisory Board last September, including:

Dr. Lawrence Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and Director of the National Economic Council under Pres. Obama; former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who is credited with helping pass the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Bill while she chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, who became an energy insider after serving as the Clinton administration’s

Energy Secretary; and former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, who co-founded the U.S. Energy Security Council
At stake is a 153 square-mile region in the Golan Heights, demarcated by Israeli authorities as exclusive territory for Afek to perform exploratory testing, which began in 2015, through early April 2017.

However, even beyond the not-at-all-minor issue of legality, Afek’s drilling in the region has stirred another, perhaps more imperative, concern. A large aquifer supplying the entire region’s drinking water is positioned uncomfortably close to the stores of fossil fuel — raising contamination concerns sufficiently serious that an Israeli high court issued a temporary restraining order in 2014, though it was quickly dismissed.

But none of this bothers Murdoch, Cheney, Rothschild, and the others, as the Golan Heights to Big Oil represents little more than an exploitative business opportunity.

Syria, in fact, has been systematically torn apart primarily because foreign powers and radical groups seek to protect their varied oil interests.

Environmental and humanitarian groups vocally criticize Afek’s exploratory drilling, but despite growing international outcry, have not succeeded in halting ongoing tests.

Considering the notoriously powerful, monied warmongers backing Afek’s petroleum plans, outrage and violation of international law wouldn’t factor one iota in matters concerning the Golan Heights.