Why should climate activists stand with Palestine?
- greennewdealdevon
- Mar 9, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 27
The Palestinian concept of ‘Awna is a unique sense of belonging to land, history and community, is a sort of moral guidance and glue that keeps the fallahi families together and on their land, continuing to grow olives. Families do not separate the human race from other beings with whom they share the Earth. It is a connectedness that spans species. Juman Simaan
The Green New Deal has its foundation in climate justice and the understanding that the environment is linked to many other structural problems in our society. Learning to deeply understand and clearly articulate those connections can be difficult and is something climate justice proponents are often challenged on. I regularly get asked why environmental activists are ‘stepping out of their lane’ and that we should ‘keep the politics out of it’.
Palestine is no different and elicits very heated and emotional reactions. I recently attended a training session run by Makan, a Palestinian-led education organisation, about the links between climate justice and Palestinian freedom. It was powerful, informative and gave me some of the knowledge I need to be able to articulate the links between these two struggles. This blog covers some of what we learnt in that session and explores why fighting for climate justice means fighting for Palestinian freedom as well, by tackling the concepts of global norms of dominance over nature, dominance over people, profit in oppression, and greenwashing.
Colonialism, extractivism and climate
At the centre of the connections between these two movements is colonialism. Around the world, historic and ongoing colonial activity has centred around the seizing of land, extracting its vital resources and violently denigrating indigenous peoples as primitive and inferior. This includes eroding their connection to the land and ridiculing traditional environmental practices.
Palestine is an archetypal example of this in recent history; Palestinian land has been portrayed as barren, empty and in need of superior agricultural practices to “make the desert bloom”[i]. This narrative helped to encourage European Jews to settle in Palestine, a ‘pioneering’, ‘back to the earth’ ethos aiming to connect settlers to the earth in the way they were centuries before[i].
From the late 1800s, Zionist policy has been to acquire land for settlers by removing Palestinians from productive land[ii], along the way intensifying agricultural practices for increased productivity, sometimes displacing existing Palestinian markets such as olive oil[i]. Approaches to make the land more appealing for settlers included planting non-native pine forests, often removing native olive trees or planting forests to hide emptied Palestinian settlements[iii].
There are many examples of environmental issues in Gaza and the West Bank[iv], but food and water insecurity are the most salient and immediately felt. Whilst water access has been hugely exacerbated by the current bombardment, it has been increasing in severity over a long period of time. Palestinian access to water is controlled and restricted by the Israeli government (including rainwater) – in Gaza 90-95% of water is not fit for human consumption and Palestinian consumption of water is well below the recommended WHO average[v].
Marginalising and oppressing communities and disconnecting them from the land reduces their resilience to climate shocks, prevents them from preparing for changes in the climate, and stops them from moving forward as a zero carbon, sustainable society.
The Black or Syrian Goat is a fascinating example of how policies designed to control indigenous people have a profound effect on nature. In 1950, the Black Goat was banned as its grazing was destructive to non-native pine forests Israel was growing, but also to control the nomadic Bedouin population who depended on the goats[vi]. 70 years later, non-native pine forests are exacerbating forest fires in Israel, so the government has allowed the reintroduction of Black Goats who graze the undergrowth, preventing forest fires[vii].
The environmental cost of war
There can be no more obvious impact on the environment than that of the physical, explosive destruction of war. The images coming out of Gaza of completely flattened buildings, streets and entire cities at first brings to mind the absolute horror at the loss of people’s lives, but the thoughts that follow are of the loss of homes, infrastructure and that there is nothing for people to return to. If Israel ever does let Palestinians rebuild in Gaza, the physical and environmental devastation will be the next horror to face – contaminated land and water, the loss of natural habitats and arable land, not to mention the carbon cost of the waste and subsequent rebuilding. It can sometimes feel callous to talk about this element when in the midst of human suffering and death, but if Palestinians are ever to return to Gaza, this will be a future problem they will have to face.
Global norms prop up Israel’s actions
The issue of Israel/Palestine is of course a unique one, with a long and incredibly complex history. It’s not unreasonable to think that it should be viewed through its own lens, with its unique problems and solutions. However, the various structures and approaches that allow Israel to continue killing and subjugating the Palestinian people have been used in the past for similar ends and continue to be used all over the world; dominance over nature, dominance over people, profit in oppression, and normalisation through greenwashing.
Dominance over nature
A clear theme is that of the powerful asserting their dominance over the land, manipulating it for their own means in order to extract maximum productivity and profit. This happened under western colonialism, and is an ongoing today, carried out through neocolonialism and deeply embedded in our cultures and economic systems. There are growing movements to prioritise nature and make it a vital consideration in our decision making, but these are often still based around wealth and profit – deeming it ‘natural capital’, another resource to exploit for profit. Until we concede that humans are not ‘dominant’ over nature, and learn from those indigenous and traditional practices of working with the land that have long been ridiculed, we will continue to exacerbate our environmental problems, including climate change.
If we are going to change our relationship with nature and have a fighting chance at tackling the climate crisis, we need to learn from, not ignore, how indigenous communities have established a link with nature, rather than dominance over it. A combination of that knowledge acquired over centuries, or even millennia, and more modern approaches is how we best create a balance that gets us through the climate and ecological crises towards a long-term, sustainable relationship with nature.
Dominance over people
Oppression of people and nature are very closely linked – the subjugation of people has been, and continues to be, a common and disgraceful theme of western countries as they encroach across the world. Israel’s determination to remove the Palestinian people from their land has been perpetrated since (at least) the Nakba in 1948[ii], and is still being clearly pursued as a policy by the government and its members[viii]. Western supporters of Israel’s colonisation, ethnic cleansing, and potential genocide[ix] have themselves committed such acts. The UK helped to create the situation in Palestine through its own imperialism >100 years ago and has continued to provide arms and aid to Israel, as well as political cover and support.
Colonisation is not a policy many would confess to pursuing in the modern age, but those mindsets still exist and play out in multiple different ways across the world.
"Ten generations on from the advent of imperialism, its terminal phase sees the barbarity of the gunboat and the slaver succeeded by that of the Category 5 cyclone and the Frontex patrol drone” Planet on Fire, Lawrence and Laybourn
Supporting Israel’s more obvious acts of setter-colonialism is one way of western nations upholding a principles of one society’s domination over another.
Profit in oppression
That companies and individuals profit financially from war and ongoing conflict is not new and has been happening the world over for as long as war has existed. The current bombardment of Gaza is no exception – large US defence contractors were speaking of the benefits to production following 7th October[x] while US defence stocks grew 3.5-5%[xi] immediately following 7th October.
Weapons manufacturers and technology companies have long-term business models invested in violent conflicts across the world that they don’t see ending anytime soon. Indeed, climate change will increase conflicts around the world which these companies will likely benefit from, not to mention the huge carbon cost of military technology and action across the world. It is simply not in their interest to tackle climate change.
Normalisation through Greenwashing
Many countries across the world (and Israel itself) provide aid and assistance to Palestinians. This includes providing assistance to help decarbonise or tackle the impacts of climate change such as improving food and water insecurity.
However many of these programmes seek to tackle the symptoms, not the root causes – placing a sticking plaster over an issue that will never improve while Israel continues its occupation. A salient example is the approach to improving water security in Gaza – there are several programmes that look to provide innovative solutions with the resources that remain in Gaza itself, but at no point addresses why Gaza has limited water resources, and that a more sustainable solutions come from outside its borders[xii].
This approach is the dominant approach to climate change across the world – presenting technical solutions to specific environmental problems, while continuing to exacerbate and contribute to the causes of those problems. Many of these solutions are touted by incumbent industries whose interests are served by allowing them to continue their damaging practices. Examples include technologies like carbon capture and storage – far from proven at scale, it allows fossil fuel companies to continue their vast extractivist enterprises.
Techno-optimism cannot continue to dominate the approach to the climate crisis – we must fight to fix the deep, structural issues in our societies that are causing the climate and environmental crises.
We must work across movements to achieve true justice
Many people support the Palestinian cause – the horror of the actions of the Israeli army since October 7th has galvanised many people to support more openly and more practically – myself included. But many still divorce this from their climate activism, when in fact the causes they are fighting for are rooted in the same adversaries. Movements are stronger when they fight together and we live in a world where our problems are multiple, complex and intertwined. When we work together, we have more power to fight these problems at the same time, creating solidarity and building new bonds as we go.
References
[i] Creating Facts on the Ground: Agriculture in Israel and Palestine (1882-2000), Leah Temper, 2009
[ii] The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappé, 2006
[iii] page 227, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappé, 2006
[vi] Organized Violence and Organized Abandonment Beyond the Human: the Case of Brucellosis among Palestinians in Israel, Osama Tanous, Rabea Eghbariah, 2022
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