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This flash report comes as a follow up report for Who Profit’s in depth report titled “Greenwashing the occupation: The solar energy industry and the Israeli occupation”, which was published in February 2017. While the latter exposes the political economy of Israeli solar energy in the occupied West Bank, particularly in the Jordan Valley area, this flash report sheds light on Israel’s capitalist ventures of solar energy projects in the Naqab (Negev) area where the native population of Palestinian Bedouins, faces acute and severe living conditions alongside forcible displacement policies.

This report scrutinizes the Israeli solar energy industry by exposing corporate involvement in commercial solar fields and residential solar systems that have been built on occupied Palestinian land, particularly in the Jordan Valley. It also provides a legal analysis of Israel’s violations of international law as an occupying power and the companies’ breaches of business and human rights frameworks. Finally, the report illustrates the intricacies of the captive Palestinian market, highlights the Israeli politics of debts and examines the viability of the Palestinian renewable energy market under occupation.

As of January 2017, Israel operates 4 large-scale commercial solar fields on Palestinian occupied land in the West Bank. Connected to Israel’s national grid, these fields electrify Israeli households in settlements and within the Green Line.

Through Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) debt management, Israel devours Palestinian revenues. Israel’s payment deductions are kept in the dark with no monitoring mechanisms. At the same time, electricity generated from renewable means in illegal Israeli settlements is bought by IEC.

On November 2016, Who Profits obtained visual evidence strongly suggesting that Keter no longer operates in the occupied West Bank.

Since its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel has systematically exploited the resources of the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area more intensively than elsewhere in the West Bank. Israel has controlled the area’s major tourist sites and natural resources, including its minerals, fertile land, and water sources. As Who Profits' report revealed in 2012, Ahava has been exploiting Palestinian natural resources by operating a mud excavation site in the occupied territory, on the shores of the Dead Sea, since 2004. In this update, Who Profits examines the latest information regarding the activities of Ahava in the occupied Dead Sea.

Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 28,000 Palestinian houses, public buildings and private commercial properties in the occupied Palestinian territory. This massive, man-made destruction is not a side effect of the occupation but a fundamental element in its control mechanism. The 7th of September, 2016, marked the first demolition in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. In this update, Who Profits looks at the massive role of Hyundai Heavy Industries in house demolitions in the occupied Syrian and Palestinian territories, as well as the ways in which this company has been profiting from this mechanism of the Israeli occupation.

In this update, Who Profits looks at the reality of the Palestinian market as a captive market, cemented by the Paris Protocol, the economic annex of the Oslo Accords, through a case study of the Palestinian Mushroom Initiative. This case study will expose a dauntless economic model of resistance while revealing Israel’s relentless strangulation of the Palestinian economy, through licensing impediments, security checks, and the massive fees and taxes incurred through the process of exporting raw materials, among other difficulties.