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With international attention focusing on the Palestinian UN bid, the prisoner swap and the US response to Unesco accepting Palestine, a much smaller event but no less revealing has been largely overlooked: Israel wants to destroy a Spanish-sponsored solar power plant in the West Bank.

The solar plant is not particularly big, but it does provide electricity for 40 Palestinian families, a school and a medical centre in a town called Emnaizel, south of Hebron in the West Bank.

The Spanish Agency for Cooperation and Development helped cover the costs of around Euros 300,000 (Dh1.51 million) and the Spanish association, Seba (Servicios Energeticos Basicos Autonomos), helped with the installation in 2009. Israel claims the trouble has to do with the location.

The solar panels in Emnaizel are located in Area C of the West Bank, which is off limits to Palestinian construction and under complete Israeli military control. Essentially no building permits are granted by Israel there and no connections are allowed with the rest of the West Bank. The repercussions here are significant for the inhabitants of Emnaizel — they will simply no longer have access to electricity since they cannot connect with the Palestinian grid, being in Area C.

Areas A, B and C are geographic denominations that emanate from the 1993 Oslo Accords. They were meant to be ‘interim' steps that would pass over gradual authority and eventual sovereignty to the Palestinians in the West Bank. The problem is Israel has not let go.

Area A includes the main cities of the West Bank under full Palestinian authority — even though Israel would often make random incursions for security reasons. Area B is the land around the cities where security is ‘shared' with Israel. Area C is the rest, indeed a majority of the West Bank.

Surely, with so much else at stake, there is little, if any, need to take such action? The spread of renewable energy is good for all mankind, and once again, because of a somewhat over-fussy government post, an entire country is once again tarred with the brush of “aggressor” throughout the Middle East. When will it ever end?

Happy reading

Andy Skillen
Publishing Director

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