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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, May 13, 2017
The sun also shines … but not equally on all
With an abundance of sunlight, Palestinians should be in prime position to take advantage of global advances in alternative energy technology.
Instead, however, solar power has become another area of segregation,
with Israel building solar fields in occupied Palestinian territory in
violation of international law and for the benefit of Israeli settlers.
A recent report by the research center Who Profits details how international corporations are complicit in this discriminatory solar power policy.
The study also notes how Palestinians, in trying to implement their own
small-scale solar projects, often face threats of demolition.
“We’ve been here since 1948,” says Ali Mohamed Hraizat, quoted in the
report. The head of the Palestinian village council of Imneizil, his
community is not connected to the Israeli electrical grid and a
demolition order has been issued against its solar panels: “We try to
stay and maintain our lives, but people will leave if the electricity is
cut off.”
Greenwashing
At the forum of the global initiative Sustainable Energy for All
launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israel’s UN ambassador Ron
Prosor declared in May 2015 that “to realize that the same sun that
shines equally on all of us, is owned by none of us, and can supply
energy in abundance, inherently promotes peace.”
Such comments exemplify attempts to
portray Israel as an environmental champion despite the discriminatory
manner in which green energy is being implemented. It is known as “greenwashing” by Palestine solidarity campaigners.
Who Profits notes that 25 percent of the current Palestinian demand for
energy could be met by using presently available sources such as solar,
biomass and wind energy. But the Israeli barriers to movement and
contiguous infrastructure needed to produce, store and supply energy
make Palestinian energy independence virtually impossible.
The situation is particularly dire in Gaza, where the bombing of its
sole power plant in Israeli military offensives and dependence on Israel
for fuel has lead to power cuts of anywhere from eight to 20 hours on a
daily basis.
Electric apartheid
Since October 2014, the Israeli government has promoted solar power in
West Bank settlements through state subsidies for commercial solar
fields and home-based solar systems. These renewable sources supplement
the connection Israeli settlements already have to the conventional
power grid.
Electricity in both Israel and the West Bank is supplied by a
state-controlled monopoly, the Israel Electric Corporation. When the
company was first officially registered during the British Mandate in
1923, it was called the Palestine Electric Corporation. The name was not
changed until 1961.
Four commercial solar fields have been built in the West Bank so far.
All supply power to the Israel Electric Corporation, which buys
solar-generated power at four times the price of non-renewable sources.
Settlers who install individual residential systems in their homes have
the additional incentive that any surplus energy created can be sold
back to the company.
There are no such incentives for Palestinians, who are denied both
access to the Israeli grid and permission to build new structures.
For example, in November 2015, the Meitarim Solar Field was built next
to the Palestinian village Khirbet Zanuta. Khirbet Zanuta is denied
access to any electricity (as well as water, sewage, or
telecommunications) network.
Located near the boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank, the
village is hemmed in by Israel’s wall, settler bypass roads, three
settlements and an Israeli settlement industrial zone. Settlement
expansion has taken some 200,000 square meters of village land, while no
building permits have been issued to Khirbet Zanuta residents.
In 2007, Israeli authorities issued demolition orders against most of the structures in Khirbet Zanuta. Its residents have been fighting legal battles to resist the complete destruction of their village ever since.
Even when international organizations assist Palestinians in overcoming
the many obstacles to installing solar technology, the resulting
projects are often threatened with demolition.
Who Profits cites the example of Comet-ME, an organization that has
built 30 solar energy systems in the West Bank. Israeli authorities are
threatening 16 of those projects with demolition.
Power plays
As the Khirbet Zanuta example shows, Israeli authorities have used solar
power as one more element of an electrical infrastructure used to
control Palestinian society.
In the West Bank, Palestinian electrical companies function as
sub-distributors and bill collectors for the Israel Electric
Corporation. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip consume the
lowest amount of energy in the region while paying the highest prices.
Who Profits reports that, with an average price of about $0.18 per
kilowatt-hour from 2010 to 2013, the price of electricity for
Palestinians in the West Bank was 12 times higher than the average price
in Israel.
These high prices, demanded from a Palestinian economy withered by
decades of occupation, have created a debt crisis in which Israeli
authorities use the electricity bill owed to the Israel Electric
Corporation as a political weapon. According to the Israel Electric
Corporation, the debt owed by the Palestinian Authority amounted to
approximately $530 million in 2016.
Last year, the Israel Electric Corporation cut power for
specified periods of time to West Bank cities, calling it an official
warning to the Palestinian Authority to pay its bills. Such practices
amount to collective punishment, a violation of international law under
the Fourth Geneva Convention and Hague Regulations, Who Profits states.
Who Profits specializes in investigating corporate complicity in the
Israeli settler-colonial enterprise. In producing the report, the
authors contacted each of the dozen companies who either produced the
solar panels or participated in construction of the commercial fields.
They informed the companies, which included Israeli, US, German, Italian
and Chinese firms, that their products and services were being used in
breach of international law.
Clean energy, dirty truth
Only two companies responded, taking a familiar line used by many
corporations engaged in the settler-colonial economy. PADCON, a German
company, claimed that it “regularly supplies electrical equipment to
construction companies in Israel that build photovoltaic projects,” and
that they “don’t know nor require to ask where this equipment was
installed by the Israeli companies.”
Caterpillar, long targeted by human rights campaigners for the use of
its machinery in the demolition of Palestinian homes, had frequently
made a similar defense that
it has “neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use
of the equipment” they sell to the Israeli military.
However, in addition to providing solar technology and logistical
support, Israeli companies Clal Sun, Energix, and the Company for the
Development of Mount Hebron participated directly in the very
construction of commercial solar fields on occupied land, making their
complicity that much more indefensible.
In 2012, Israel launched an international campaign to brand itself as a pioneer of green technology.
But as long as Israel’s solar energy initiatives remain as segregated as
the rest of its settler-colonial enterprise, such clean energy efforts
will always be polluted by its apartheid policies.