Why is UNICEF a “proud supporter” of Israeli settlements?

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 9 April 2019

The EU-financed EuroAsia Interconnector will link Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law with the European electricity grid.

Ahmad Al-Bazz ActiveStills

Update 10 April:

UNICEF has confirmed to The Electronic Intifada that EuroAsia Interconnector used its logo without permission.

Original story

UNICEF is sponsoring a major EU-financed project to link Israeli settlements to Europe’s electricity grid.

The United Nations children’s agency is listed among the “proud supporters” of the EuroAsia Interconnector, a project to build a 1,000-mile subsea cable linking the European electricity grid with Israel via Greece and Cyprus.

This means that Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights – all illegal under international law – would be linked to the European network and would benefit from Israel’s ability to trade electricity through the interconnector.

When completed, the system will also allow Israel to sell electricity produced from gas extracted from Mediterranean fields that are the subject of international disputes involving Israel, the Palestinians and Lebanon.

“This multi-billion euro project rewards Israel for its war crimes while Palestinians are being kept in the dark,” the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) said in an action alert this week urging the public to tell UNICEF to drop its support for the project.

“Israel’s siege on Gaza limits electricity to just a few hours per day for close to two million Palestinians living there,” the action alert states. “Israel has repeatedly demolished Palestinian solar energy installations in the occupied West Bank, the only source of energy for many communities.”

Many of the Palestinian energy projects destroyed by Israel were funded by the EU.

Crimes against children

The BNC notes that UNICEF’s slogan is “For every child, hope,” and that the UN organization “has widely documented how Israel’s illegal settlements deny Palestinian children their basic human rights and any hope for a future of justice, peace and dignity.”

Yet UNICEF is “supporting an electricity cable to these colonial settlements, granting them recognition, money and infrastructure so they flourish,” the BNC states.

Israel’s systematic abuse of Palestinian children includes military detention and torture in the West Bank.

And in Gaza, a UN independent commission of inquiry recently called for the arrest of Israelis involved in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including the intentional killing of children during Great March of Return protests.

With a budget of $4 billion largely financed by the European Union, the EuroAsia Interconnector has received a high-level blessing from the Trump administration, which recently granted US recognition to Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.

“By financing the interconnector and connecting Europe’s electricity grid with Israel’s, the EU and member states would provide direct support to Israel’s illegal settlements in violation of their legal obligations and commitments,” the BNC states in a recent briefing document on the project.

The BNC, a broad-based Palestinian civil society coalition, is demanding that the EU withdraw tenders and financing related to the Israel-Cyprus electricity link, conduct a credible human rights assessment of the EuroAsia Interconnector and warn companies and investors of legal and other risks of involving themselves in Israeli gas and electricity projects.

Risk to citizens’ privacy

The BNC is also warning of a risk to citizens’ privacy in relation to a side project of the EuroAsia Interconnector, the so-called Quantum cable, a fiber-optic line that will run from Spain to Israel.

“Laying of the Quantum cable will mean that 60 percent of the world’s internet traffic – between Europe and Asia – will pass through Israel, raising serious concerns on security and civil rights,” according to the BNC.

Israel has a well-documented record of cyberspying and subterfuge, capabilities that its intelligence agencies and firms deploy against advocates for Palestinian human rights or market to other repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The EU’s support for the EuroAsia Interconnector and Israeli gas export to Europe stands in stark contrast with Israel’s systematic assault on Palestinian human rights, energy sources and supply,” the BNC adds.

While UNICEF’s open support for Israel’s criminal activities is out of keeping with its mission and mandate, the EU’s complicity is typical of the bloc’s long-standing policy of rewarding Israel for its violations in spite of European lip service to peace, human rights and international law.

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Comments

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Aida Hansen replied on

From this moment on I am stopping my monthly regular donations to UNICEF. UNICEF is supporting Israel’s theft of Palestinian land, the murder of children, women and men and the torture which is constantly inflicted on them.
The world knows that those settlements are illegal, that the Israeli soldiers are forcibly evacuating Palestinians from their homes to give free ownership to the intruders. UNICEF should denounce apartheid not support it.

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Which charity though? replied on

Which charity though? Do we have a list of ethical Palestinian charities that ensure the money doesn't go to the likes of Hamas & is used for constructive, non-violent, actually helpful purposes? Is it even legal to send money to Palestinian groups from overseas e.g. USA, Australia?

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Sami replied on

Huh? Don't know if you're a Zionist troll or if that was a genuine concern/question, but Palestinians are in no condition to let charitable funds be used for any other purpose than they are donated for, and of course it's legal to give from elsewhere - how do you think Palestinians are surviving - the good will of the Zionist apartheid state that doesn't let certain food and medical supplies in and lets their civilians (let alone their army) murder Palestinians in cold blood?

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Which charity tho? replied on

Genuine question and noted there's no list there of who you'd recommend we give to provided by you here.

Think I recall reading there were (USA? Other nations?) laws against giving to organisations that funded terorism and that Hamas is a designated terrorist group so giving to any charity where the money does / could go to Hamas - which runs the entire Gaza strip - could be a problem and get people in potential legal trouble?

I don't know so am asking if anyone can clarify that please.

I guess there's UNWRA / UN and Red Cross operating there legitimately right?

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John Costello replied on

Nothing succeeds like success. And the Right is having it beyond anything in a hundred years. Liberal institutions are fluttering in the battling winds of nationalism and national division. Capitalism is defying morality, ethics, reason and even sound economics in order to preserve its dominion. All of the developed nations of the world have as their raison d'etra, the imperative of capital primacy and the Right shares that without any moral, ethical or even rational caveats.
Institutions like UNICEF, the UN generally, the World Court and the ICC. All the NGO's, national domestic social safety net institutions - everything liberal - is under attack and entirely vulnerable. If the UN's only chance to survive is to take its sustenance from its assassin it will, all the way until it no longer even has what it's crafted so carefully to look like an alternative.
Don't give to UNICEF anymore? Is that really an answer?

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.