The Apartheid Israeli regime threatens to demolish German-funded solar power farm in the West Bank

A Little Power to Some Palestinian People, For Now
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours
IPS

SHE’B EL-BUTTUM, WEST BANK, Mar 30, 2012 (IPS) - A handful of makeshift homes built from small boulders and plastic tarps and secured with thick ropes sit in the isolated community of She’b El- Buttum in the South Hebron Hills. A few metres away, several rows of solar panels and two wind turbines are affixed to the rocky hilltop, providing electricity to the village’s 150 residents.

The energy project in the South Hebron hills.

Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS.

"We use the electricity for the milking machine, for the washing machine, the fridge, and for getting light when night falls," says Ismail Al-Jabarin, a 43-year-old She’b El-Buttum resident. "Before getting access to electricity, we lived on a generator that functioned two hours a day only, and had frequent problems. It is much, much better with electricity."

..."If the military forces come and destroy the electricity, our life will turn miserable again," Al-Jabarin tells IPS. "Our life is much more comfortable with electricity. Life without electricity is deplorable and very difficult."

...The systems were installed by Israeli group Community Electricity and Technology Middle East (COMET-ME), and funded in large part by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

...Currently, COMET-ME’s solar panel and wind turbine installations provide electricity to more than 1,500 people in 19 communities throughout the South Mount Hebron area, which counts a total Palestinian population of approximately 8,000.

...Still, should the demolitions go ahead, at least 500 Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills would be left in the dark.

..."Israel goes around the world to help (people) – when there are earthquakes, tsunamis, whatever – but in their own backyard, when they have under-developed communities that they are obliged to protect, they not only don’t do that but they demolish projects made to support the people."

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