Global Energy Embargo to End the Genocide in Gaza

February 26, 2024

One month ago, on Friday, January 26 2024, the International Court of Justice took the historic ruling to proceed with South Africa’s case charging Israel with genocide. This decision, after decades of obfuscation and foot dragging by United Nations bodies, makes crystal clear Israel’s stated goal of annihilating the Palestinian people.

Yet, Israel’s genocide still goes unpunished and we continue to watch with horror as bombardment, murder and death is rained down on the steadfast people of Gaza. More than 30,000 Palestinians have now been killed, the entire Gaza strip reduced to rubble and its population subjected to starvation. Urgent action is required to stop the carnage.

In response to Israel’s ongoing impunity, we, as Palestinian organisations, call for a total global energy embargo against Israel until it ends the genocide and its regime of Apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. 

 Energy supplies are instrumental to Israel’s war machine: to operate its army tanks, armored personnel carriers, ships and military bulldozers, ​​including specialist jet fuel that allows Israeli jets to rain death and destruction down on Gaza. The demand for an energy embargo is integral to the call from Palestinian trade unions to stop arming Israel which has already elicited an enormous global response. 

This call includes previous demands from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) to “all trade unions and workers associations, and transportation and ports workers…in oil, gas, and metals producing countries” to stop feeding the Israel war machine, and to stop “export...to countries supporting the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.”

 Building on this work, today we issue an urgent call to workers, environmental activists, human rights groups, civil society and states to take immediate action to:

1. Stop all energy exports to Israel.
2. End all imports of Israeli energy. 
3. Divest from extraction projects, and joint ventures with Israeli energy corporations.   
4. Stop all energy exports from Middle East and Global Majority countries to the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and other imperialist states supporting Israel in its campaign of genocide.

Energy embargoes driven by trade unions and popular demands have played a significant role in anti-colonial history, both in West Asia and further afield, and can act as significant points of pressure. Today, they offer new means of enforcing international law and impelling the Israeli machine to cease its murder.

 We call on you - friends, supporters, environmentalists, workers and people of conscience around the world - to move without hesitation to disrupt the flow of energy making Israel’s genocide possible! We call on you to take action in your workplaces, at ports, outside oil companies and in any arena in which energy flowing to Israel can be disrupted!

 Now is the time to act and build on the historical mobilisations for Gaza, to end the genocide and bring forward a liberated Palestine.

Arab Group for the Protection of Nature

Disrupt Power.ps

Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON)

Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD)