How to bring green energy to Israeli Arabs - opinion

• Author: YOSEF ISRAEL ABRAMOWITZ
• Published date: 28 September 2021

The fixes are easy to make.

Yair Lapid, the foreign minister and alternative prime minister, is politically most vulnerable, since his Yesh Atid party controls the Energy Ministry; and he also seeks to improve relations with US Democrats, whose leader has prioritized climate justice and Israel has essentially spit in the face of the Biden-Harris Administration on this burning (and often, racial) issue.

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In the democratic state of Israel, it is hard to explain why only one solar field – rather than 20% of them to match Israel's Arab population – is in the Arab community: a 10 MW solar field in the recognized village of Tarabin in the Negev. All other solar fields are on Jewish-owned land, which also means the economic benefits brought by solar have favored kibbutzim and moshavim and have systematically excluded Bedouin and other minorities. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

I know this from experience. I have worked with the Bedouin community for over a dozen years to bring the blessings of solar power to their largely impoverished communities. Even those Bedouin who made painful compromises on land with the state have been stymied from realizing economic benefit from the land, especially in renewables, because of a labyrinth of regulations and pseudo secret plans, like future train tracks or future forests that are not disclosed in the compromise process.

Israel's energy policy is deliberately meant to slow down renewables so that it can ramp up dependence on gas, install even more gas pipelines throughout the country, and justify granting licenses for more oil and gas exploration at a time when the civilized world is fast turning to renewables.

Part of the collateral damage of the Finance Ministry nixing additional solar quotas a decade ago were six Bedouin families who were trying to develop their land for solar, and no solution has yet been put forward to have them complete the task. And by the electricity regulator (PUA) switching from licenses with set tariff amounts – with lower risks to developers – to winner-takes-all low-cost tenders, investors are severely disincentivized to work with complicated Arab land-rights issues. Time is money and it takes an extra three to eight years to navigate a solar field on Arab lands than on Jewish ones and there is still no guarantee of success.

ONE QUICK government...