[News] Challenging Israel’s Climate Apartheid in Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

al-shabaka.org
<https://al-shabaka.org/memos/challenging-israels-climate-apartheid-in-palestine/>
Challenging
Israel’s Climate Apartheid in Palestine

by Muna Dajani <https://al-shabaka.org/en/author/MunaDajani/> on January
30, 2022
*Overview*

Through its participation in the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26)
and other international forums, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to
promote a state-centric approach to climate change that ultimately blocks
legitimate climate and environmental justice in Palestine. In effect,
Palestinian leadership has reduced the Palestinian liberation struggle -
inherently a struggle for climate and environmental justice - to a
failed state-building
project
<https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/using-indigeneity-in-the-struggle-for-palestinian-liberation/>
since the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Justice is rarely addressed
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/08/cop26-legitimacy-questioned-as-groups-excluded-from-crucial-talks>
in these international conventions and forums, leaving Palestinians
confined to the logic of international donors who seek to manage the
occupation <https://www.972mag.com/colonial-idea-palestinian-authority/>
instead of pressuring Israel to end it. The normalization and
depoliticization of Israel’s climate apartheid characterize the existing
approach to addressing Palestine’s climatic and environmental issues, and
they must be countered by Palestinians and international climate justice
advocates alike.
*Normalizing and Depoliticizing Climate Apartheid*

In Palestine, the peacebuilding framework
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/thirty-years-on-the-ruse-of-the-middle-east-peace-process/>
has shaped cooperation programs that depoliticize environmental and climate
issues, and thus, fail to disrupt Israel’s settler colonial practices.
Indeed, donor-funded initiatives like EcoPeace and the Arava Institute have
for years used slogans such as “the environment knows no borders
<https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/lara-krasnostein/2017/11/06/the-environment-knows-no-borders-a-tour-of-the-gaza-israeli-border-with-ecopeace/>”
and “bringing people together
<https://arava.org/2021/10/regional-environmental-cooperation/>.”
Fundamentally, these initiatives only serve to disregard
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/abs/environmental-framing-and-its-limits-campaigns-in-palestine-and-israel/7B0A525A026F517866E05AB8952CC33C>
what is clearly a situation of climate apartheid
<https://progressive.international/blueprint/7ecb4b5b-7ee8-4a69-9ead-6f56cb4ced78-agha-climate-apartheid-in-palestine/en>,
and to promote climate change as yet another arena where cooperation and
dialogue are the answer in lieu of radical political change.

Palestinian environmental organizations and their allies have long
criticized
<https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/20.500.12289/9950/9950.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>
these initiatives for normalizing and legitimizing the Israeli occupation
under the guise of sustainable development, trust-building, and greening
the environment. They have highlighted that by normalizing and depoliticizing
climate change
<https://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/an-open-letter-to-participants-in-the-arava-institute%E2%80%99s-online-event-%E2%80%9Cwith-earth-and-each-other%E2%80%9D/>,
these initiatives promote the idea that environmental issues can be solved
with technology and market-based incentives alone.

Greenwashing perpetuates the depoliticization and normalization of what is
fundamentally Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Fow.ly%2FOrJT50HFlAv&text=Greenwashing%20perpetuates%20the%20depoliticization%20and%20normalization%20of%20what%20is%20fundamentally%20Israel%E2%80%99s%20ethnic%20cleansing%20of%20Palestinians&via=AlShabaka&related=AlShabaka>Click
To Tweet
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Fow.ly%2FOrJT50HFlAv&text=Greenwashing%20perpetuates%20the%20depoliticization%20and%20normalization%20of%20what%20is%20fundamentally%20Israel%E2%80%99s%20ethnic%20cleansing%20of%20Palestinians&via=AlShabaka&related=AlShabaka>

Climate change, however, is not a natural phenomenon; it is compounded by
political and economic decisions. In the case of Palestine, the effects of
climate change are influenced and exacerbated by Israeli settler colonialism
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/climate-change-the-occupation-and-a-vulnerable-palestine/>
and theft of natural resources. But rather than support Palestinians in
their struggle to secure their water rights
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/apolitical-approach-palestines-water-crisis/>,
for example, the EU and other international donors have for decades
emphasized the potential of technical solutions to increase water
availability and resolve “water scarcity
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/36-million-eu-france-and-world-bank-build-hebron-regional>”
in Palestine.

Under the current climate change financing mechanisms, this damaging
discourse prevails. For example, the Green Climate Fund, a multilateral
financial mechanism of the UNFCCC, is currently supporting a five-year
project focused on increasing water availability for sustainable
agriculture in Gaza through the use of treated wastewater
<https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/fp119>. This is another techno-fix
that disregards and normalizes the political reality that Gaza faces due to
Israel’s crippling blockade and siege, which in turn isolates it from the
rest of Palestine in natural resources and geographical continuity.

These practices also affect Arabs outside of the West Bank and Gaza. In
ratifying the Paris Agreement, Israel has committed to a 25% reduction of
its 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and aims to achieve this goal by
developing green energy projects
<https://whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Greenwashing-the-Golan-The-Israeli-Wind-Energy-Industry-in-the-Occupied-Syrian-Golan.pdf>
in the occupied Golan Heights and the Naqab desert, among other areas.
Syrian residents of the Golan (Jawlanis) face threats to their access to
land and water due to an Israeli plan to develop a large-scale wind project
<https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/syria/occupied-syrian-golan-wind-turbine-project-poses-existential-threat>
on what remains of Jawlani agricultural lands. And as of January 2022,
Israel is uprooting Palestinians from their homes and lands in the Naqab as
part of a project to flatten dunes and plant trees
<https://www.arabnews.com/node/2003286/middle-east>. This greenwashing
perpetuates the depoliticization and normalization of what is fundamentally
Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
*Recommendations*

The 2021 Unity Intifada brought renewed efforts among Palestinians to challenge
their forced fragmentation
<https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/defying-fragmentation-and-the-significance-of-unity-a-new-palestinian-uprising/>.
Similarly, the Palestinian environment transcends geopolitical boundaries,
and thus, climate change across Palestine must be understood as an
inherently political reality defined by decades of Israeli settler
colonialism and theft of natural resources.

Re-politicizing the climate and environment, and challenging discourses of
peacebuilding and collaboration are crucial steps in centering climate
justice within Palestinian popular mobilization. To do so:

   - The donor community should cease support for green normalization
   projects that ignore the political reality and power disparities between
   Palestinians and Israelis.
   - Palestinian leadership and the donor community should instead invest
   in the justice-based advocacy of Palestinian civil society organizations,
   such as PENGON <http://www.pengon.org/> and Al Haq, which are raising
   awareness and mobilizing for intersectional
   <https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19209.html> environmental, water, and
   climate justice.
   - Palestinian climate justice advocates should challenge the
   techno-managerial approaches of international forums like COP and its
   related climate funding mechanisms.
   - Local and international climate change activists should focus on
   addressing historical climate and environmental injustices
   <https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/between-rising-tide-and-apartheid?v=large>
   in Palestine in order to hold Israel accountable for its theft of
   Palestinians’ natural resources.
   - Palestinian leadership and the international community should support
   the mobilization of local, national, and international resources to
   pressure Israel to acknowledge and commit to adhering to Palestinian’s
   water and land rights.
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