How Israel greenwashes its colonisation of the Golan Heights
Members of the Druze community set tyres aflame in protest against an Israeli wind turbine project planned across agricultural lands in their village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on 21 June 2023
Wesam Sharaf reports in Middle East Eye:
On early Tuesday morning, Israeli authorities, including hundreds of police officers and more than 100 police vehicles, stormed privately-owned apple and cherry orchards belonging to the Syrian Druze community members in the occupied Golan Heights.
Authorities subsequently blocked off all roads leading to the fields in order to provide the private Israeli company, Energix Renewable Energies Ltd, access and protection to establish a wind turbine farm there.
The far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is strongly pushing for this wind farm, calling this campaign “Golan Winds” and claiming that the project is necessary for the Israeli economy. He further insisted that the occupied Golan Heights “needs more Israeli governance”.
In a span of two days, the company carried out the construction of the wind turbines while Israeli police served as “bodyguards” protecting their work. This development project, of course, was carried out against the will of the Syrian citizens – the lawful owners of the land.
As a result, many in the area began demonstrating against the police blockade and wind farm. On 21 June, at 10am local time (8am GMT), Israeli police violently cracked down on protesters using excessive force and live ammunition against them, causing life-threatening injuries to at least five people.
A ‘national project’
In 2013, Israeli authorities started planning the development of a wind farm in the occupied Golan Heights, which was declared a “national project” by the Israeli Planning Administration and which allowed the finance minister to confiscate privately-owned lands to develop the area as it wished.
Since then, the area’s Syrian citizens have vocally opposed the project on legal and cultural grounds. Private attorneys and nongovernmental organisations submitted on behalf of the local community hundreds of objections to the Israeli planning authorities explaining their opposition.
But the planning authorities did not take their concerns into consideration, approving in 2019 the development of 21 wind turbines on the privately-owned lands of Syrian citizens. It is important to note that this is the first-ever wind farm to be established on privately-owned lands in Israel (of the more than five wind farms).
According to the approved plan, the project will occupy a total area of 3,674 dunams (3,674,000 sqm): 3,644 dunams (3,644,000 sqm) is the area of the wind farm – wide enough to contain turbines up to 200 metres tall – with 20 dunams (20,000 sqm) for roads, eight dunams (8,000 sqm) for infrastructure, and one dunam (1000 sqm) for use by Israeli military and police forces.
Why the opposition?
Occupied during the six-day war in 1967, most of the inhabitants of the Syrian Golan Heights were expelled to the east, into Syria. After the war, only five villages remained. Since then, the Israeli government took many steps to control the remaining local community and its resources, similar to the policies imposed on Palestinians remaining in 1948: land confiscations, unequal resource division, apartheid and police brutality.