Dubai, Feb 25 (AP) Qatar pledged USD 60 million on Thursday to help construct a natural gas pipeline running from Israel into the Gaza Strip, the Qatari government said, a project that aims to ease the energy crisis that long has afflicted the impoverished Palestinian enclave. Natural gas now flowing through a pipeline in Israel from the eastern Mediterranean will be transported via a new extension into Gaza, the Qatari Foreign Ministry announced on its website. The eastern Mediterranean has become one of the world’s major offshore drilling zones, with lucrative deepwater gas fields recently discovered in Israel’s territorial waters..