As world leaders gathered in Dubai for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Israeli President Isaac Herzog and a delegation of two dozen Israeli officials were allowed to join them. This is despite the fact that Israel is committing not only genocide in Gaza, but also ecocide of devastating proportions.
COP28 is another venue used by Israel to whitewash its image and consolidate its normalization with Arab states. Indeed, Herzog met with a number of Arab leaders who chose to normalize relations with Israel and pursued joint “green initiatives” with Israeli companies.
So-called environmentally friendly collaborative projects between Israel and Arab states constitute a form of econormalization – the use of “environmentalism” to whitewash and normalize Israeli oppression and environmental injustice.
This effectively extends Israeli green colonialism – which has devastated Palestine for decades – to the rest of the Arab world. Resisting it must be part of Arab solidarity and the fight for the Palestinian cause.
Water Apartheid
A prominent example of econormalization is the UAE-backed Israeli-Jordanian deal to trade desalinated water for energy.
In November 2021, Jordan, Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a declaration of intent for Project Green and Project Blue, jointly known as Project Prosperity. It envisioned the construction of a 600 MW solar power plant by Masdar, a state-owned renewable energy company in the United Arab Emirates, on Jordanian territory to sell electricity to Israel and the expansion of a Israeli water desalination program to export 200 million cubic meters of water to Jordan.
The three countries intended to announce a concrete agreement on the implementation of the projects at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, but before the start of the conference, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that his country would not sign anything because of the war in Gaza. . However, no official announcement has been made regarding the complete termination of the agreement.
Although the future of the project is uncertain at the moment, it has nonetheless contributed to Israel’s eco-normalization. This has helped reinforce the country’s image as a green technology pioneer “helping” its “underdeveloped” neighbors suffering from the consequences of climate change.
The project effectively conceals Israel’s responsibility for Jordan’s water shortage. Israel is depleting its neighbor’s water resources by usurping control of the Jordan River and restricting access to the resources of the Yarmouk River. It controls double the share of water it should be entitled to under the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and refuses to comply with previous sharing agreements.
Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, played a leading role in depriving Jordan of its fair share of water. It diverts water from the Jordan River to Israeli communities, particularly those in the Naqab Desert, which directly affects water availability in Jordan.
It also created a water supply network for illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, depriving the indigenous Palestinian population of adequate access to water resources and effectively imposing water apartheid on them. It was allowed to do so through the Israeli military occupation and its Military Order 158 of 1967, which states that Israel has full control of all water resources in the occupied territories and that none may be developed. without his permission – which, of course, the Palestinians do. I almost never receive.
Despite its leading role in pushing Jordan and the occupied West Bank toward water scarcity, Mekorot has been touted internationally as a “pioneer” in water desalination technology. Its participation in water-related projects, particularly in the Global South, has contributed to Israel’s greenwashing efforts.
This will undoubtedly continue even if Israel triggers what is already shaping up to be a water disaster in Gaza.
Even before the ongoing brutal war, the Gaza Strip was grappling with a major water crisis. An estimated 96 percent of the water in its aquifer was contaminated and unfit for human use. This was largely due to the fact that the siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip in 2007 had prevented adequate management and treatment of water and wastewater.
Since mid-October, even the few existing wastewater treatment and desalination facilities have become unusable as Israel has cut off electricity and fuel supplies. Additionally, Israeli bombings have targeted water pipes and sewers throughout Gaza.
Public health experts have expressed concerns about the imminent outbreak of infectious diseases, including waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Israel’s plan to flood the tunnels under Gaza with seawater could lead to increased contamination of groundwater and soil, resulting in a water-related environmental and human disaster.
Green Energy Colonialism
Israel’s econormalization has also extended to the energy sector.
A few months before COP27, in August 2022, two Israeli companies, Enlight Renewable Energy (ENLT) and NewMed Energy, signed a memorandum of understanding to develop renewable energy projects in Jordan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, in Egypt and Bahrain, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Oman, which have not officially normalized relations with Israel.
Their projects include the development, construction and operation of wind and solar power plants as well as energy storage. These projects, of course, strengthen Israel’s image as a hub for creative renewable energy technologies and help greenize its image.
Enlight and NewMed have been involved in projects that reinforce the Israeli occupation and apartheid. Enlight owns two wind farm projects in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights and is developing another wind energy project in the northern part of the Naqab Desert and the southern part of the occupied West Bank, in partnership with several illegal Israeli settlements.
NewMed is a subsidiary of the Delek group, involved in gas exploration projects in contested maritime areas, near Palestinian and Lebanese waters. It also owns a chain of gas stations in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights and supplies fuel to Israeli occupation forces.
Of course, the Palestinian and Syrian populations originating from these occupied territories do not benefit from Israeli energy projects and are effectively denied sovereignty over their energy resources.
Palestinians living in Area C do not have access to the area’s electricity grid, which was developed by Israel to serve illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli authorities also refuse to issue them permits to install solar panels, which could provide an alternative energy source.
In Gaza, before the war, Palestinians lived with only a few hours of electricity per day due to the Israeli siege. As part of the comprehensive blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since October 7, Israel has completely cut off Gaza’s access to electricity and targeted alternative energy sources such as solar panels. Even solar panel systems operating in hospitals like Al-Shifa have been bombed.
Israel’s exploitation of Palestinian resources to the detriment of the Palestinian people, disguised as “green projects”, is a perfect illustration of green energy colonialism.
Energy colonialism refers to corporations and states that plunder and exploit the resources and land of poor countries and communities to produce energy for their own use and benefit.
As we argued in our book Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region, renewable energy colonialism is an extension of colonial relations of plunder and dispossession.
It effectively maintains the same political, economic and social structures that have generated inequalities, impoverishment and dispossession in formerly and still colonized places and transfers the negative effects of energy production – including pollution – onto these already marginalized communities.
Resisting econormalization and colonialism
Econormalization allows Israel to position itself in the energy and water sectors regionally and globally as a leader in innovation and green technologies, thereby strengthening its political and diplomatic power.
With the climate and energy crises exacerbating, it will likely use other countries’ growing dependence on its technology, energy and water resources as a new tool to marginalize and sideline the Palestinian struggle. .
There is therefore a constant link between Israeli greenwashing, reinforced by econormalization, and the consolidation of apartheid and settler colonialism in Palestine and the Golan Heights.
The dark tunnel of Palestinian life under Israeli oppression is growing darker and darker. However, a glimmer of light appears that illuminates the Palestinians’ long road to liberation: this light is the growing resistance of the Palestinian people, who refuse to be isolated, dehumanized and annihilated.
The struggle to overthrow Israel’s oppressive occupation and apartheid regime is also part of the broader struggle for self-determination and emancipation of dispossessed and marginalized peoples across the world. Colonial attempts to further isolate Palestine from the rest of the Arab world through eco-normalization can be thwarted by the power collectively embraced by Arabs and other peoples.
To this end, social movements, environmental groups, unions, student associations and civil society organizations in the Arab region and beyond must intensify their protests against their governments until they end their normalization ties with Israel. International grassroots movements should increase their support for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel and shed more light on the role that Israeli “green technology” companies play in the colonization of Palestine.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.