The Internationalist Archive
Eco-normalization allows Israel to place itself in both the energy and water sectors regionally and globally, thereby reinforcing its political and diplomatic power in the region and worldwide. With the exacerbating climate and energy crises, countries reliant on Israeli energy and water (as well as technology) may start to see the Palestinian struggle as a matter of less importance than their water and energy security. This allows eco-normalization to reinforce the role of Israeli greenwashing as a money-making machine for Israeli companies while undermining a just agricultural and energy transition in Palestine, inextricably linked to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.
Mekorot, a major player in Israeli water desalination, has been able to position itself as a leader in water desalination and solutions globally, partly through Israel’s greenwashing narrative. For example, Mekorot is responsible for 40 percent of Cyprus’s seawater desalination. Its technology and “expertise” generate millions of dollars in revenue from water projects developed across the world, particularly in the global South. This money finances its, and the Israeli government’s, practice of water apartheid against the Palestinian people, with Mekorot playing a significant role in building Israeli water apartheid infrastructure, controlling most of the Palestinian water resources in the West Bank and diverting them to illegal Israeli settlements (in addition to the company’s role in usurping the Jordan River). The company’s infrastructure of wells and bypass pipelines is built in such a way as to ensure that Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank have no access to water, while, at the same time, it helps the Israeli military to confiscate Palestinian water pipelines and other alternative means to access water in Area C. By practising water apartheid, Mekorot creates a coercive environment that aims to force Palestinians from their land and expand illegal Israeli settlements. Mekorot’s active enforcement of Israeli water apartheid policies disrupts the function of the land as a source of subsistence through which Palestinians can sustain their life and identity. It threatens the Palestinian agricultural sector and food sovereignty, which are essential components of a just agricultural transition. For instance, Palestinian farming communities in the Jordan Valley are no longer able to rely on agriculture for their livelihoods due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to water and land.
The same story is seen in the blockaded Gaza Strip where, for decades, Israel has been destroying the agricultural sector. Since 2007, the siege of Gaza has restricted Palestinian farmers’ access to their agricultural land and has exacerbated the severe water crisis in the strip.
This entrenching of Israeli energy colonialism and apartheid is also evident in the greenwashing functions of Prosperity Green and ENLTNewMed. Israel denies the colonized Palestinians (and Jawlanis) sovereignty over their energy resources and perpetuates their captivity to its energy market. Israeli control over Palestinian and Jawlani energy resources is an effective tool of settler colonial dispossession and oppression. At the same time, the Gaza Strip, situated not far from the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields, has been living in darkness for years due to Israel preventing Gazans from having full access to electricity. The electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip is further exacerbated during regular Israeli assaults and massacres. Electricity, water, violence, and a myriad other tools are part of the Israeli settler colonial mechanisms that are used to “manage” and control Palestinians in the designated ghettos. Eco-normalizing and greenwashing energy projects provide Israel with financial aid to consolidate its ghettoization policies in respect of millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and beyond.
The wider Palestinian energy sphere is held captive by Israel. Palestinians inhabiting Area C of the occupied West Bank bear the brunt of Palestinian energy dependence on Israel. Palestinians are denied access to the electricity grid in the area, which has been developed by Israel to serve illegal Israeli settlements. Israel also refuses to issue Palestinians with permits to construct solar panels, which could provide an alternative source of energy. Palestinians are thus forced to build solar panels (often funded by NGOs and EU) without Israeli permits, which Israel then confiscates and demolishes. Between 2001 and 2016, Israeli policies and practices in Area C caused Palestinians an estimated loss of 65 million euros, in relation to EU-funded support, including solar installations. The solar energy sector in Area C has been established by Palestinian civil society in order to reinforce the steadfastness of communities in the area, and Israel uses its de-development as a tactic to forcibly displace them.
Even as this is taking place, the Israeli solar energy sector is flourishing, due to expanding illegal settlements and solar farms across the West Bank. In 2016, Israeli revenue from electricity generated from solar farms located in both the West Bank and inside Israel reached 1.6 billion shekels (approximately $445 million). As at 2017, Israel operated four large-scale solar fields in the West Bank. All of these are connected to Israel’s national grid, which provides electricity to Israeli households in illegal settlements in the West Bank and within Israel. It is worth pointing out in passing here that the strength of the Israeli solar energy sector sits in stark contrast to the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinian (second-class) citizens of Israel living in 35 “unrecognised” villages in the Naqab Desert have no access to electricity (or water, health care and education), as part of the discriminatory Israeli policies that are designed to force them from their land and replace their villages with Jewish-only settlements and JNF-planted pine trees.
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