HOW ARAB ECO-NORMALISATION OF ISRAEL

COVERS UP ITS CRIMES

Sir Waqas Alam

Essay Themes Notes Available

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HOW ARAB ECO-NORMALISATION OF ISRAEL
COVERS UP ITS CRIMES
Manal Shqair
Palestinian climate activist and researcher
Hamza Hamouchene
London-based Algerian researcher and activist
Hafawa Rabhi Essay Themes Notes Available
Independent Tunisian journalist
Instagram: @css_with_waqas
Source: Aljazera WhatsApp: +92 312 9421112
Published On 12 Dec 202312 Dec 2023
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The image of a ‘green technology pioneer’ helps Israel to greenwash its occupation and apartheid in
Palestine.

As world leaders gathered in Dubai for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), Israeli President
Isaac Herzog and a delegation of two dozen Israeli officials were allowed to join them. That is despite
the fact that Israel is not only committing genocide in Gaza, but also ecocide of devastating proportions.

COP28 is yet another venue Israel has used to greenwash its image and solidify its normalisation with
Arab states. Indeed, Herzog met with a number of Arab leaders who have chosen to normalise relations
with Israel and have pursued joint “green initiatives” with Israeli companies.

So-called environmentally friendly collaborative projects between Israel and Arab states constitute a
form of eco-normalisation – the use of “environmentalism” to greenwash and normalise Israeli
oppression and environmental injustice.

This effectively extends Israeli green colonialism – which has been devastating Palestine for decades –
into the rest of the Arab world. Resisting it must be part of Arab solidarity and struggle in support of
the Palestinian cause.

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Water apartheid
One prominent example of eco-normalisation is a United Arab Emirates-backed Israeli-Jordanian deal
to exchange desalinated water for energy.

In November 2021, Jordan, Israel and the UAE signed a declaration of intent for Project Green and
Project Blue, jointly known as Project Prosperity. It envisioned the construction of a 600MW solar
power plant by Masdar, a UAE state-owned renewable energy company, on Jordanian territory to sell
electricity to Israel and the expansion of an Israeli water desalination programme to export 200 million
cubic metres of water to Jordan.

The three countries intended to announce a concrete agreement on the implementation of the projects
at the COP28 in the UAE, but ahead of the start of the conference, Jordanian foreign minister Ayman
Safadi said that his country would not sign anything due to the war in Gaza. However, there has been
no official announcement about the full termination of the deal.

While the future of the project is uncertain at this time, it still has contributed to Israel’s eco-
normalisation. It has helped support an image of the country as a green technology pioneer “assisting”
its “underdeveloped” neighbours suffering from the consequences of climate change.

The project effectively covers up Israel’s responsibility for water scarcity in Jordan. Israel has been
depleting its neighbour’s water resources by usurping control over the Jordan River and restricting
access to the resources of the Yarmouk River. It controls double the water share it should be entitled to
under the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and refuses to abide by previous sharing arrangements.

Mekorot, the Israeli national water company, has played a leading role in depriving Jordan of its fair
share of water. It has been diverting water from the Jordan River to Israeli communities, including ones
in the Naqab desert, which is directly affecting water availability for Jordan.

It also has created a water supply network for the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,
depriving the native Palestinian population of adequate access to water resources and effectively
imposing water apartheid on them. It has been enabled to do so by the Israeli military occupation and
its Military Order 158 of 1967, which declares that Israel has full control over all water resources in the
occupied territories and none can be developed without its permission – which, of course, Palestinians
almost never receive.

Despite the leading role it is playing in pushing Jordan and the occupied West Bank towards water
scarcity, Mekorot has been touted internationally as a “pioneer” in water desalination technology. Its
participation in water projects, especially in the Global South, has contributed to Israel’s greenwashing
efforts.

Those would undoubtedly continue even as Israel triggers what is already shaping to be a water
catastrophe in Gaza.

Even before the ongoing brutal war, the Gaza Strip was struggling with a major water crisis. It was
estimated that 96 percent of the water in its aquifer was contaminated and unfit for human use. This
was very much due to the fact that the siege Israel imposed on the Strip in 2007 had prevented proper
water and wastewater management and treatment.

Since mid-October, even the few existing wastewater and desalination facilities have become inoperable
as Israel has cut off electricity and fuel supplies. In addition, the Israeli bombardment has targeted
water pipes and sewers throughout Gaza.

Experts in public health have raised concerns about the looming outbreak of infectious diseases,
including waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid. Israel’s plan to flood tunnels under Gaza with
seawater may lead to the further contamination of underground water and soil, resulting in a water-
related environmental and human disaster.

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Green energy colonialism
The eco-normalisation of Israel has also extended into the energy sector.

A few months ahead of 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 UAE, Egypt and Bahrain, as well as Saudi Arabia and Oman, which
have not officially normalised relations with Israel.

Their plans include the development, construction and operation of wind and solar power plants and
energy storage. These projects, of course, bolster the image of Israel as a hub for creative renewable
energy technologies and help greenwash its image.

Both Enlight and NewMed have been involved in projects that reinforce the Israeli occupation and
apartheid. Enlight has 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, which has been involved in gas exploration projects in
disputed maritime areas, near Palestinian and Lebanese waters. It also owns a chain of petrol stations
across illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights and supplies fuel to the
Israeli occupation forces.

Of course, the native Palestinian and Syrian populations of these occupied territories do not benefit
from Israeli energy projects and they are effectively denied sovereignty over their energy resources.

Palestinians inhabiting Area C have no access to the electricity grid in the area, which has been
developed by Israel to serve Israeli illegal settlements. The Israeli authorities also refuse to issue them
permits to set up solar panels, which could provide an alternative source of energy.

In Gaza, before the war, Palestinians lived with just a few hours of electricity per day due to the Israeli
siege. As part of the complete blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since October 7, Israel has totally cut
off electricity from reaching Gaza and targeted alternative sources of energy like solar panels. Even the
solar panel systems operating in hospitals such as al-Shifa have been bombed.

Israel’s exploitation of Palestinian resources to the detriment of the Palestinian people masked in the
form of “green projects” is a perfect illustration of green energy colonialism.

Energy colonialism refers to companies and states plundering and exploiting the resources and land of
impoverished countries and communities to generate energy for their own use and benefit.

As we have argued in our book Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab
Region, renewable energy colonialism is an extension of the colonial relations of plunder and
dispossession.

It effectively maintains the same political, economic and social structures that have generated
inequality, impoverishment and dispossession in formerly and still colonised places and shifts the
negative effects of energy production – including pollution – to these already marginalised
communities.

Resisting eco-normalisation and colonialism

Eco-normalisation allows Israel to position itself in the energy and water sectors regionally and globally
as a leader in innovation and green technologies, thereby reinforcing its political and diplomatic power.

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With the exacerbating climate and energy crises, it will likely use the increasing reliance of other
countries on its technology and energy and water resources as yet another tool to marginalise and
sideline the Palestinian struggle.

Thus, there is an abiding connection between Israeli greenwashing, which is reinforced through eco-
normalisation, and the consolidation of apartheid and settler colonialism in Palestine and the Golan
Heights.

The dark tunnel that is Palestinians’ life under Israeli oppression is getting darker. Yet a glimpse of light
can be seen that illuminates the Palestinians’ long path to liberation: that light is the increasing
resistance of the Palestinian people, who refuse to be isolated, dehumanised and obliterated.

The struggle to topple Israel’s oppressive occupation and apartheid regime is also part of the wider
struggle for self-determination and emancipation of dispossessed and marginalised peoples across the
world. Colonial attempts to further isolate Palestine from the rest of the Arab world through eco-
normalisation can be thwarted by the collectively enacted power of Arabs and other peoples.

To this end, social movements, environmental groups, trade unions, student associations and civil
society organisations in the Arab region and beyond must intensify their protests against their
governments until they end their normalisation ties with Israel. International grassroots movements
should increase their support for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and shine more light
on the role Israeli “green technology” companies play in the colonisation of Palestine.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect
Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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