I cannot agree that a long term goal was oil. There is the old Jewish joke that Moses travelled for 40 years in the desert to find the one place in the Middle East without oil. From 1948 till present, the vast majority of the time Israel has been without any domestic oil/gas production. Recent gas field discoveries have changed that but that is recent. If it was about oil, Israel would not have given up the Sinai. If it was about oil, Israel would not have evacuated Jews from Gaza in 2005. If it was about oil, Israel would not have signed off on a maritime boundary with Lebanon-with Hezbollah considered a far greater threat than Hamas.