[News] COP27: The Truth Behind Israel’s Greenwashing Delegation
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Mon Nov 21 11:35:11 EST 2022
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*COP27: The Truth Behind Israel’s Greenwashing Delegation *
21 November 2022
Prior to the start of the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which
took place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, between 6 and 18 November, the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted the official delegation it
will send to COP27, boasting that this is the State’s “most significant
participation since international conferences on this topic began.” The
Israeli delegation
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=fdea2d7738&e=08c14cf485>
included the President of Israel, senior officials of various ministers,
Zionist parastatal institutions like the Jewish National Fund, civil
society, academics, senior officials of the private sector, and
entrepreneurs. This year, Israel
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=a5c3d54583&e=08c14cf485>
built its first national pavilion at COP, promoting 10 climate tech
companies and hosting more than 30 events.
The delegation weaponised Israel’s long-used greenwashing strategy,
boasting about the country’s “leading role” in climate tech and
innovation toward climate change mitigation and adaptation, in areas
such as renewable energy, gas, water desalination and reuse,
afforestation, and alternative proteins.
Such a narrative showcases Israel as ‘environmentally-friendly’, in
order to normalize and deflect its climate apartheid and environmental
destruction against the Palestinian people, their land and their natural
resources. The greenwashing narrative also conceals how Israel’s
settler-colonial and apartheid regime, and prolonged belligerent
occupation actually reinforces Palestinians’ climate vulnerability.
Israel’s greenwashing discourse
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=e95c13265b&e=08c14cf485>
has its foundation in the Zionist settler-colonial and racist logic that
Zionists are “more advanced and civilised” to develop the land of
Palestine than its indigenous Palestinian people, and that they came to
Palestine to “make the desert bloom”. At an event
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=70260b8ac3&e=08c14cf485>
titled, “Water reuse to address climate challenges” at the Israeli
Pavilion at COP27, the Israeli Minister of Environmental Protection,
utilised this narrative, boasting about Israel’s leading role in water
desalination and reuse, underlying that “/we have established the state
of Israel in the middle of the desert. We suffered from water scarcity
since the beginning…. We came up with the solution.”/
*What is Behind Israel’s Eco-Friendly Discourse and “Solutions”?*
1. Land and Natural Resources Appropriation
Israel’s greenwashing strategy puts a blind eye to its direct violation
of Palestinians’ ability to develop self-determined resilience
strategies of mitigation and adaptation to the climate crisis
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=bee2cdc31e&e=08c14cf485>
under its system of settler-colonialism, apartheid and prolonged
occupation. This is specifically due to Israel’s policies of
fragmentation, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the denial of the
peoples’ collective right to self-determination, development and the
appropriation, exploitation and degradation of Palestinian land and
natural resources. This has been effected
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=d98c23f278&e=08c14cf485>
through the exploitation of land, water, natural gas and oil, quarrying,
extracting dead sea minerals, as well as depleting Palestinians’
non-renewable and finite resources.
Specifically vulnerable to increased climate hazards are Palestinian
communities whose livelihood mostly relies on access to and exploitation
of their land and natural wealth, such as farming, herding and Bedouin
communities. Around two million Palestinians living under a 14-year-old
illegal blockade and closure in the Gaza Strip are also exposed to
increased risks to climate related hazards such as water scarcity, and
food insecurity. Around 97 percent
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=0c72782718&e=08c14cf485>
of Gaza water is undrinkable, and over 60 percent of Gaza households are
food insecure
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=d83940efa2&e=08c14cf485>.
Implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies is dependent
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=130a12a961&e=08c14cf485>
on the Palestinian people’s ability to access and develop their land and
natural resources in a sovereign and free manner, which is part of their
inalienable right to self-determination.
2. Climate Apartheid
In addition to Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime’s impacts on
Palestinians’ climate vulnerability, there are many Israeli policies and
activities which leave direct environmental injustice impacts over
Palestinians, including:
1. Illegal settlements have many negative impacts on both the
environment and the human rights of nearby Palestinian communities.
In industrial and agricultural settlements, corporations including
chemical factories and companies
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=c8183ea2e7&e=08c14cf485>
operate without or with very low consideration to any environmental
law, including the Israeli law, causing contamination of the
surrounding air, soil and water.
2. Many illegal Israeli settlements do not have proper waste treatment
facilities, discharging
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=5b6b346047&e=08c14cf485>
a large amount of untreated sewage into Palestinian streams,
valleys, and onto agricultural land. This implicates the destruction
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=0ce3969196&e=08c14cf485>
of the soil and changing its biological composition, implicating the
death of trees and crops, as well as disease spread and extinction
to Palestinian livestock and wildlife.
3. Israel appropriates Palestinian land in the occupied Palestinian
territory (OPT) as landfills for its waste. Israel, the Occupying
Power illegally transports
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=9789c5fa07&e=08c14cf485>
waste, including hazardous
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=980462398e&e=08c14cf485>
waste, into 15 Israeli waste facilities in the occupied West Bank.
Moreover, illegal settlers’ solid waste, which is twice as more
solid waste per capita than Palestinians, is mostly dumped
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=2f32a7507d&e=08c14cf485>
in landfills in the West Bank. This is combined with the inability
of Palestinians to develop climate-resilient infrastructure,
including waste infrastructure, because of Israel’s apartheid and
occupation and the associated policies and activities. All these
climate apartheid practices and policies contaminate the air and
pose health risks to nearby Palestinian
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=f73d5d4ea6&e=08c14cf485>
communities.
4. The quarrying industry in the OPT, not only contributes to the
violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination and to
permanent sovereignty, it further benefits from the appropriation of
Palestinian property, and the pillage of Palestinian natural
resources. Further, it depletes non-renewable and finite resources
of the protected population, which may amount to the war crime of
destruction of natural resources and environmental destruction
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=9fd32539fe&e=08c14cf485>.
The resulting clouds of dust and pollution from the quarries, which
do not abide by any environmental law, cause damage to the nearby
Palestinian residents’ rights to land, landscape and environment.
5. Another form of environmental destruction is caused by Israel’s
targeting of Palestinian civilian property and infrastructure as
part of its widespread and systematic demolition policy in the West
Bank and successive military offensives in the Gaza Stip. For
example, during Israel’s May 2021 military offensive on the Gaza
Strip, Israel targeted with live bullets and artillery shells the
main waste dump
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=5f2ce45d4b&e=08c14cf485>
of Gaza city triggering a major health and environmental crisis.
Another attack during the May 2021 military offensive, which caused
catastrophic environmental damages included Israel’s targeted attack
and destruction of the Khudair Warehouse. The Khudair Warehouse
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=2f2edaae14&e=08c14cf485>
housed over 50 percent of agricultural supplies within the Gaza
Strip. The attack on the chemical warehouse, created a chemical
cloud that spread chemical waste over the people and environment of
Gaza, poisoning the population. As the Israeli attack targeted with
knowledge a chemical warehouse with chemical contents, it may
constitute an indirect chemical weapon, which is prohibited under
international treaty and customary law.[1] <#_ftn1>
*Conclusion: Decolonization, Social Justice, and Human Rights to Advance
Climate Justice*
While the COP serves as an avenue to address the global climate crisis,
many States have often employed the COP to boast about their
environmentally friendly initiatives, turning a blind eye to their own
regimes of colonialism, occupation, aggression, apartheid, and
authoritarianism and how they reinforce social injustices, racial
discrimination, and the denial of the people the exercise of their right
to self-determination.
The struggle for climate justice cannot be separated from struggles to
end all systems of alien domination, including colonialism, apartheid,
and occupation. An intersectional
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=b8656d35d4&e=08c14cf485>
approach to climate change-related challenges, should be adopted, to
include self-determination, human rights, and social justice.
In Palestine, Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime and military
occupation continues to deny the Palestinian people their inalienable
right to self-determination, including their right to full sovereignty
over their natural resources. In effect, the Palestinian people have
been prevented from confronting the adverse effects of climate change
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=15fff3335e&e=08c14cf485>.
Decolonizing Palestine, and ending the apartheid and occupation, as well
as realizing the Palestinian peoples’ right to self-determination
including their right to full sovereignty to their land and natural
resources is the only sustainable solution for the Palestinian people to
set and implement viable mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate
change.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] <#_ftnref1> Rule 74, ICRC customary International Humanitarian Law
Database; Hague Declaration concerning Asphyxiating Gases, 1899;
Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating,
Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare,
1925 (Geneva Gas Protocol); Chemical Weapons Convention, Article I; Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 8(2)(b)(xviii).
/Copyright © 2022 Al-Haq Organization, All rights reserved./
Contacts Al Haq
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Palestine
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