Water Fact: May 1, 2023
Israel’s greenwashing cannot be allowed to cover up its shameful environmental record
Earth Day (April 22) gave Israeli embassies around the world the opportunity to tout their country’s prowess in the environmental field and promote what it says are 1,300 companies and start-ups active in ‘climate innovation.’
Here, for instance, is what H.E. Ran Yaakoby, the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand, stated about water and trees in an Earth Day press release:
“Israel purifies 94% of wastewater, of which close to 90% is used for agriculture. Moreover, water loss in urban systems in Israel is minimal, standing at only a few percent. The above practices are thanks to the groundbreaking technologies developed in Israel and the knowledge accumulated over the years, which can be applied in large parts of the world….Despite its young age and relatively small area, Israel has accumulated vast experience in planting forests in semi-arid regions and preserving them in dry and extreme conditions. This knowhow and experience are priceless for a world where forests that are so necessary to deal with the climate crisis are dying from heat, drought and diseases and are burning.”
A considerably less rosy picture is given by scientific reports indicating, according to a detailed Haaretz investigation, “that in the foreseeable future, the climate crisis will reap dire consequences for Israel.”
And meanwhile, Palestinians continue to experience the dire consequences of Israel’s environmental apartheid policies, foremost among them the ongoing theft of water and land, and mass destruction of trees and agriculture.
On Earth Day, Israeli settlers grazed their livestock on fields of wheat, barley, alfalfa and crocuses belonging to Palestinian farmers south of Hebron. A few days later, on April 27, settlers destroyed an irrigation networkand ripped up crops belonging to Palestinian residents of Husan village west of Bethlehem. On the same day, settlers - who had recently set up an illegal outpost in the northern Jordan Valley - attacked shepherdsand their flocks in the effort to drive them off their land. As Amira Hass describes in Haaretz (April 28), herds of Israeli cows are now crushing young olive trees as they graze over a thousand acres of Palestinian-owned land near the Separation Wall.
We should not let Arbor Day (April 28) pass without acknowledging Israel’s ‘vast experience’ destroying Palestinian trees. According to a piece in The Yale Review of International Studies, more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been uprooted by Israel since 1967. In one small village (Qarawat Bani Hassan) 2,000 olive trees were destroyed in November 2022. That’s just olive trees: according to the media outlet Jerusalem24, the number of Palestinian olive, fruit and other trees destroyed by Israel over just the past 30 years could exceed 2.5 million.
Clearing the land of Palestinians is the primary goal of Israel’s colonizing project, no matter what the environmental cost.
Photo caption: On April 28, youth groups from Nazareth and Bethlehem traveled to the Jordan Valley to assist farmers in clearing land and harvesting. When a group of soldiers and settlers tried to force them to leave, they resisted with songs and dancing.