Israel’s systematic discriminatory and unequal treatment of Palestinians has been described as apartheid by a diverse range of human rights organisations, including Amnesty International. The way that Israel controls and exploits Palestinian energy resources plays a fundamental role in perpetuating this apartheid.
Israel has been limiting the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza since the 1990s, and significantly enhanced this blockade in 2007, when Hamas democratically won the elections. This policy of creating an open air prison in Gaza (which has been ably supported by Egpyt), has included severely restricting power and electricity. The Gaza power station was bombed by Israel in 2006 and 2014, and stopped working again in 2023 when it ran out of fuel. Israel has consistently restricted the levels of fuel entering into Gaza, with the result that the population of 2.3 million Palestinians there have had access to around one fifth of the electricity required to meet their needs. This has regularly seen residents of Gaza have a power supply for four hours per day.
Much of what made Palestine an attractive place for the Zionist settlement was the abundance of natural resources, which have systematically been captured and utilised by Israel at the expense of Palestinians. One clear example of this is the gas reserves off the coast of Gaza. Just as Israel has stopped Palestinians from maintaining their livelihoods and culture through fishing, it has prevented extraction of gas reserves in Palestinian waters. Not only this, it has now issued licenses to several corporations for the exploration of these gas fields for its own benefit.
In addition to the theft and control of natural resources in Palestine, Israel is also guilty of countless environmental crimes. This has included the planting of millions of non-indigenous trees (with the aim of creating a more European environment) with untold cost to the land and ecosystems. Such trees require huge amounts of water to sustain them, while Palestinian farmers have been cut off, often by strategic use of the Apartheid Wall as well as settler violence, to the limited water supplies they need to sustain their livelihoods.
Scotland’s complicity in Energy Apartheid
Companies based in Scotland (particularly Aberdeen – the “oil capital of Europe”) now have a strong record of complicity in perpetuating this energy apartheid.
For example, in 2013 Wood Group completed the build of the Dorad Power station, one of Israel’s largest private power plant, which continues to provide power directly to Israeli Occupation Forces, Mekerot (the Israeli water company), as well as businesses working in illegal settlements/colonies.
Profits from Aberdeen-based Ithaca illegally flow to Israeli energy company Delek, which “services the Israeli military while it obliterates Gaza” (Francesca Albanese). It has been consistently named by the UN as a company complicit in providing services and utilities in illegal Israeli settlements/colonies.
In complete contempt for international law, Dana Petroleum successfully bid for a license to explore gas fields in the area identified under international law as Palestinian waters. This deal was announced in late October 2023 as Israel stepped up its genocidal campaign on Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. A subsidiary of the (South Korean) state-owned Korean National Oil Corporation (KNOC), Dana seems committed to making profit from oil and gas extraction that power Israel’s ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Read our joint statement with partners on Dana Petroleum and KNOC here.
Take action
Write to the CEOs of Dana Petroleum and the Korean National Oil Corporation, demanding they cut ties with Israel immediately.