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Environmental Normalization in Palestine with Inès Abdel Razek
146 Plays2 years ago
Inès Abdel Razek joins host Yara Hawari to discuss how the Israeli regime uses eco-normalization projects and greenwashing tactics to cover up its theft of Palestinian natural resources and lands as part of its settler-colonial project across Palestine.
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Transcript
Introduction to People to People Project Failure
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Speaker
These projects are not new. The People to People project have been actively promoted and millions have been poured into them after the Oslo agreements. But it has shown that it has not worked because we're here today and Israel has only been able to cover up its crime and to continue its dispossession through active impunity, through partly this greenwashing.
Rethinking Palestine Podcast and Palestinian Voices
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Speaker
This is Rethinking Palestine, a podcast from Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. We are a virtual think tank that aims to foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination. We draw upon the vast knowledge and experience of the Palestinian people, whether in Palestine or in exile, to put forward strong and diverse Palestinian policy voices. In this podcast, we will be bringing these voices to you so that you can listen to Palestinians sharing their analysis wherever you are in the world.
Is Greenwashing Environmental Cooperation?
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At a conference in February of this year, Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced his vision for a regional partnership to create a renewable Middle East. Herzog spoke of joint environmental threats, especially around water resources, and claimed that they can only be solved by cooperation. Herzog has already visited Greece, Cyprus and Turkey, and has stated that he hopes that the cooperation will include Egypt, the Gulf countries and Palestinians.
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This discourse of Israel being a champion of environmentalism in the region is not new. Indeed, the Israeli regime has often used a tactic known as greenwashing to improve its image. Greenwashing in general is an attempt to use certain environmental initiatives to hide behind the fact that it actually causes more damage than it does to help prevent climate change.
Climate Apartheid and Palestinian Vulnerability
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Now globally, the climate crisis is fueled by inequality and engineered by complicit governments and corporations that put profit before people and planet.
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Everywhere, the least powerful are the most effective. The Israeli regime uses greenwashing to cover up the disastrous impact it is having on the Palestinian environment and landscape. And Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and apartheid, with no control over their land or natural resources, are highly vulnerable to the climate crisis. Some have even been calling this a form of climate apartheid. In this context, and in the context of renewed US aid to the 1967 Palestinian occupied territories that is directly funneling money into normalization projects,
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eco-normalisation or environmental normalisation initiatives are on the rise.
Greenwashing's Impact on Palestinians
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To discuss this with me on this episode is Ines Abder-Razat, Advocacy Director at the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy and Ashavaka Policy member. Ines, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine. Thank you Yara, it's good to be home almost.
00:02:50
Speaker
I think our listeners are aware of the concept of greenwashing, but perhaps you could explain it a bit more in the Palestinian context and also in the context of renewed US aid funding and explicit support for people-to-people projects. Yes, thank you, Yara, and I think you also outlined some in your introduction. In our particular context, I think such hypocrisy that lies behind the concept of greenwashing is
00:03:14
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probably better understood through the prism of green colonialism and even green settler colonialism. So design this project, you know, has been a settler colonial endeavor, as also recognized by its founders, Harto, Ben-Gurion and others, until, you know, colonialism was was recognized as harmful and not so popular.
Land Dispossession through Green Colonialism
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So Israel
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actually moved to denying that it was. So what it has meant is, you know, this continued practices to replace the native population, the Palestinian population by an outside settler population here, the Jewish people. And it was primarily advanced through mechanisms of land dispossession, displacement and also natural resources appropriation and exploitation. So we're talking mainly land, water, but also minerals by controlling the Dead Sea.
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or stones, you know, controlling quarries in the West Bank. So, you know, greenwashing, as you said, is not you and this green colonialism. So it has been taking the form of the Jewish National Fund planting non-indigenous, non-endemic trees on top of Palestinian villages they demolished in 1948 and 1967, but also creating environmental reserves on land annexed and taken from Palestinians in the West Bank, etc.
USAID's Role in Normalizing Dispossession
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And I think what's important to get to the international donors intervention in USAID is that so Israel has built its diplomacy and prosperity by exploiting such colonial domination and making an advantage of basically this dispossession of Palestinians, particularly through developing like agro technologies, green technologies, water efficient technologies that they're exporting around the world. And these have fundamentally been structured and developed around the dispossession of Palestinians.
00:04:57
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And so in the context of international donor interventions in USAID, they're actively, I think, normalizing at this possession. They're normalizing and trenching these domination structures and playing into promoting Israel as this beacon of a fight against the climate crisis, against the environmental crisis.
Normalisation and Power Asymmetries
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And so it's basically denies these dire asymmetries of power that exists here and the denial of rights of Palestinians and the denial of agency of decision making power of Palestinians. So it's presenting these projects, promoting cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.
00:05:39
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That means either it's the Palestinian Authority or NGOs or the business sector as one of cooperation and peace building. So instead, again, of recognizing that asymmetry of power, it's presenting the situation and normalizing and trying to present the situation as one of a dispute among two parties with equal rights, one of post-conflict situation where
00:06:05
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trust and dialogue could solve the injustice instead of again looking at the reality.
Projects Excluding Palestinians: Prosperity Green and Blue
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So Ines, what might some of these environmental normalisation projects look like? Can you give us some concrete examples? Yes, so I can give an example in the context of this renewed USAID interventions in Palestine.
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They are very much trying to promote the implementation of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel, the UAE, Sudan, Morocco, and more indirectly Saudi Arabia. So one of these projects, for example, is called Prosperity Green and Prosperity Blue.
00:06:48
Speaker
It's very much private sector oriented, which also poses the problem of making resources like water and energy commodities, and especially water, which is a right, making it a commodity to be traded. But more importantly, the problem with this project is exactly that Palestinians are completely absent of this project. And it's basically here to promote
00:07:12
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UAE investments and Israeli investments and interests and completely erase Palestinians from
Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal Project Criticism
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the picture. So this project is about producing renewable energies in Jordan, exporting it to Israel so that they desalinate water that then they would export again to Jordan. So this kind of exchange where, again, we see that the Palestinians will either receive
00:07:41
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you know, or be sold some water by the Israelis, the very water that Israel is still from them, or they will be completely erased from the equation so far. And what's interesting is, you know, how, again, the US is presenting it. So Kerry said, you know, the Middle East is at the front line of the climate crisis, and only by working together can countries in the region rise to the challenge.
00:08:04
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And he also said that this is a welcome example of how cooperation can accelerate the energy transition and build greater resilience. So we very much see the exploitation of the climate change needs and the climate crisis into normalizing this type of projects where effectively Palestinians continue to be dispossessed of their renewable resources by Israel as a colonial
Obscured Realities of Resource Dispossession
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power.
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And unfortunately, they're very, I think, popular because who doesn't love, again, cooperation, peace, and renewable energies? All of these things look very nice on paper and politically. So that's how they're really receiving such a support. And I think an interesting other example is one that has failed, is the so-called Red Sea, Dead Sea Canal, which was supposed to have
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water from the Red Sea desalinated, and then the brine transferred into the Dead Sea. And again, this project has failed. The Palestinians were very critical of it, mainly NGOs, because the PA had signed the MOU for this project to happen. They were a bit forced into it.
00:09:14
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But what this project has shown is that eventually it would have normalized it. It would have normalized the annexation of Israel to controlling the Dead Sea. I mean, the Dead Sea is in occupied West Bank, yet this project received support from the World Bank, from the U.S., and from all the international donor community, despite its tremendous problematic approach.
Call to Action: Support Al-Shabaka
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If you are enjoying this podcast,
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please visit our website www.al-shabaka.org where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
Civil Society's Stance on Normalization
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I think it would be a good idea just to pause for a minute and define what normalisation is because some of our listeners might not be so aware. Normalisation is
00:10:01
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the act of treating the Israeli regime as a normal entity as opposed to an apartheid regime. And anti-normalisation as a concept and a political practice has been agreed upon by the majority of, by consensus, by the majority of Palestinian civil society. And as you talked about
00:10:22
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you know, why these projects are so harmful. One of the main issues is the symmetry of power that is presented through these projects. But I was hoping you could expand a bit further as to why these initiatives and projects have such negative impacts on Palestinians. Yeah, I think the primary political impact, as mentioned, is that it raises, but it normalises the disposition at play
00:10:45
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by Israel from Palestinian resources and the denial of Palestinian rights to their resources. So when you're looking at promoting, for example, dialogue on water issues between Israelis and Palestinians or on renewable energy, you know, having Israelis present, for example,
Environmental Projects and Denied Resources
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them providing trucks of water to the Palestinians or agreeing, cooperating on building some solar panels
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for Palestinians. What that means is it normalizes this colonial and patronizing approach, but it raises completely what's happening on the ground. What's happening in reality is that there is constant land confiscation and expropriation of
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Palestinians from their land, expulsion of rural communities to build settlements. There is active water dispossession. Palestinians are only allowed to use 15% of the groundwater in the West Bank. We have to look at the fact that the renewable sources of water present in Palestine are mainly there underneath the West Bank, so inside Palestine.
00:11:50
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Yet Israel controls more than 85% of that and then sells back the water at very high prices to Palestinians. You know, it also raises the fact that, again, Palestinians are given zero access to the renewable sources of the water of the Jordan River or the Dead Sea. It raises the fact that, again, rural communities in the Jordan Valley
00:12:12
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are denied to dig any wells or denied being connected to water. So I think, again, this is the hypocrisy of this kind of dialogue or trust building project is that it allows Israel to present itself as a good faith actor, as someone who's ready to make a gesture when in reality
00:12:34
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all of what this international diplomacy and normalization agreement and Abraham Accords do is entrenching and facilitating them continuing that dispossession.
Crisis from Infrastructure Restrictions
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And the environmental impact are also extremely serious, and there have been over decades. I mean, the agriculture sector of Palestine has shrank.
00:12:57
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Farmers have stopped doing agriculture because it was so costly because of the lack of water, because of the lack of access to land. So Palestinians have been denied food sovereignty and food security. We're looking also at the denial of infrastructure, especially the PA for years has been, have been asking to build infrastructures like solid waste management, wastewater management, renewable energy,
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that has constantly been denied by Israel because it's located in areas that they want to keep under their control and they are annexing. So this has obviously had tremendous environmental impacts. Why? Because then Palestinians resort to other sources of energy like fuel. This is particularly dire in Gaza under siege, where Israel has bombed the only water, the power plants,
00:13:50
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And Gaza relies on fuel that is extremely polluting and it's harmful for people's health. But yet, again, the World Bank and USAID will be promoting projects of building solar panels in Gaza or treating some of the wastewater along the beach and then say that this is wonderful cooperation.
Water Projects and Occupation Impact
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So these are just some of the concrete impacts that we see.
00:14:16
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that again, maintain Palestinians under the full control of Israel and their interest in will. And it also has, I think, long term impact for people's health and for the climate impact.
00:14:32
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And as I know you are interested in the case of water and you've worked in the water policy field and we've already discussed water quite a bit during this podcast, but I was hoping you could tell us a bit more about what you've observed about recent water normalization projects.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's again interesting in what's happening with the Abrahamic course that is putting at the forefront again, this approach of peace building dialogue and people to people's approach. I think the discourse there and the political approach is really promoting water and environment as sectors that could be put first in terms of before looking at political issues or more what is considered more difficult issues than water and environment that's kind of taken as
00:15:20
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or sectors where it would be easier to build.
00:15:23
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again, that trust and dialogue. And I have seen that at play over the years. So for example, in 2009, you have the World Bank that has released a report on water saying that the main obstacles to development for the water sector for Palestinians is Israeli occupation. It's the obstacles that are documented in like a hundred page report. That report was actively lobbied against by the Israelis and the World Bank since then has completely erased
00:15:52
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political this analysis this analysis of reality and has depoliticized completely its approach and rather move towards again promoting this kind of normalizing the situation instead of looking at the root causes and so we're here today where this blue piece or green blue piece is promoted again when we know that effectively again it's erasing the root causes and it has tremendous support from
00:16:19
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international community receiving international awards, being invited that the UN Security Council to present again this sort of peace building approach. And it has been years that these initiatives have been existing, you know, of water diplomacy, of using, you know, this informal, what we call track to diplomacy, to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to discuss some of these sectorial issues.
00:16:47
Speaker
In reality, you know, all of these initiatives like the Geneva initiatives have been evaluated as not efficient. So, for example, the Swiss government has removed their funding to the Geneva initiative. And I think what it has done is, again, continue to promote this empty mantras and this really this political discourse that is completely disconnected from the reality.
00:17:13
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instead of looking at the root causes. And so it's almost like, you know, I think people can see behind, I think some people can see behind that propaganda. I think it's disinformation to bring about terms like peace or cooperation, when in fact it's completely imposed projects, imposed investments on the majority of Palestinians.
Participation in Projects: Economic Interests
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These projects tell Palestinians to forget the macro destructive regime and instead it tells them to focus on these small micro issues that will then be turned into this propaganda opportunity in which
00:17:52
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that this narrative is peddled where Palestinians and Israelis simply need to get along for an end to the so-called conflict, not that the Israeli apartheid regime needs to be dismantled. And I think some of our listeners might be a bit confused as to why Palestinians would participate in these kinds of projects. Of course, these are normalization projects, so there must be Palestinian participants.
00:18:17
Speaker
And I think the confusion is fair, especially as there is a very clear consensus on normalisation within Palestinian civil society. And of course, everything you mentioned as to how these projects are actually very harmful. So what are the benefits for Palestinians who do participate? And what are the reasons? What do you think the reasons are behind their participation?
00:18:45
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I think we need to distinguish between how the Palestinian Authority has been participating, how the business sector has been participating, and how the civil society has been participating. We have to look at first the Palestinian Authority has signed the Oslo Agreement, which in themselves were
00:19:01
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putting the PA in a place of domination. Especially when we look at the water sector, the Oslo agreements only gave 80% of the control of the renewable sources of water to the Israelis, where Palestinians would be given a certain bulk of water. That was supposed to be temporary, but the same exact amount is still the one given today to Palestinians 30 years later.
00:19:25
Speaker
So that's one. And it has also created these mechanisms again for Israeli and Palestinian bilateral discussions. So instead of looking at the dire symmetry of powers and recognizing that there should be an end to the occupation and apartheid, it did just create those mechanisms called the Joint Water Mechanism, the Joint Water Council, where you would have the Israeli government, the PA,
00:19:49
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discussing the projects for Palestinians and the vast majority of the projects again of infrastructure projects presented by the PA were denied. So you have the PA that has been trapped into its own domination and in order for let's say Palestinians in the very little islands that the PA controls or at least where it controls civil matters like water and education, they have had to surrender basically to what Israel
00:20:19
Speaker
Authorize them too. So it means that for the PA it's better to have one pipeline for water and two trucks of water instead of zero So that's how it has been, you know Playing out is that eventually in order to receive and to have access to the minimal amount of water Even if it's not your right to water even if it's too little even if you still get dispossessed from water elsewhere
00:20:43
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you still have to accept some of these breadcrumbs in order to function at a minimum level and to give services to some of the population.
Resources as Commodities: Business Involvement
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And the business sector, well, some of the business sectors and companies have eventually benefited from the occupation. I mean, a lot of people know that there has been Palestinian seminars companies that have built the wall. So I think in the case of the business sector, there are private interests at play because again, when you transform
00:21:13
Speaker
water or land or energy into commodities that become just privatized and you privatize these, let's say, the efforts that should be public into protecting public goods into, again, people having access to water and to land as a right. Some companies also are benefiting from these type of projects. So in the case of the new
00:21:37
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green prosperity and blue prosperity between Jordan, UAE and Israel, some Palestinian companies might have stakes into whether it's the solar energy panels or to some of the desalinated water within Israel. And so I think that's important to keep in mind that
00:21:56
Speaker
Again, the private businesses don't have the general interest at play in general. And when it comes to Palestinian civil society, I think at the individual level, I think you said, right, that I think when you're an individual and you live under extreme oppression, repression, stress and dispossession,
00:22:14
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you can feel the need for some empathy and for some sort of normal. And that's why I think a lot of Palestinian individuals might think that by sitting together with an Israeli, by discussing around the table, they're given some agency, they're listened to. And this is obviously promoted and actively prompted also by international Western liberal approaches. So people feel seen, people feel listened to,
00:22:44
Speaker
But the fact that the matter is is that even if you create some form of empathy in a room, as you said, it doesn't change the fact that the Palestinian go back home under unequal rights, still under apartheid, still deny their fair access to water, still deny their access to land. And the Israeli goes back to being the dominant whose prosperity is built on Palestinian dispossession. And so I think it's normal humanly for some Palestinians to think
00:23:14
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that these type of projects could change things. But over the years, again, these projects are not new. The people-to-people projects have been actively promoted and millions have been poured into them after the Oslo agreements.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
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But it has shown that it has not worked because we're here today and Israel has only been able to cover up its crime and to continue its dispossession through active impunity, through partly this greenwashing.
00:23:44
Speaker
Ines, thank you so much for that. I think we'll leave it there for today, but I hope you'll join us again on Rethinking Palestine. Thank you, Yara. My pleasure.
00:23:58
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Rethinking Palestine. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. For more policy analysis and to donate to support our work, please visit our website www.al-shabaka.org. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.