TEHRAN- Palestinian organizations have called on the international community to enforce an energy embargo on the Israeli regime to pressure Tel Aviv to end its genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza.

The organizations also seek a disruption to the supply of energy to the Israeli regime until it ends its apartheid rule and its ethnic cleansing campaign which extends to the occupied West Bank. 

Despite the historic International Court of Justice ruling to proceed with South Africa’s case charging Israel with genocide and the evidence presented that made it quite clear that Tel Aviv’s stated goal is annihilating the Palestinian people, there have been no punitive measures by the international community against the occupying regime. 

As people around the world continue to watch their TV screens with horror amid the graphic photos emerging from Gaza, Palestinian groups have made a joint call for a global energy embargo against Tel Aviv to end the suffering in Gaza. 

The appeal is seen as the best practical measure possible to end the daily Israeli massacres that have so far killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are women and children (80% according to the Pentagon). Gaza’s 2.3 million population is also starved. 

Urgent and effective measures are required now to stop the killing and end the starvation in Gaza, the Palestinian groups argue. 

“In response to Israel’s ongoing impunity, we, as Palestinian organizations, 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.”

In a joint statement, they emphasized how the Israeli regime is strongly dependent on energy to execute its genocidal war on Gaza.

Tel Aviv’s dependence on energy in its war on Gaza stretches to such an extent that no amount of U.S. weapons used by the Israeli military in the enclave could have brought one of, if not the biggest, humanitarian crises to the world today.

“Energy supplies are instrumental to Israel’s war machine: to operate its army tanks, armored personnel carriers, ships and military bulldozers, including jet fuel that allows Israeli jets to rain death and destruction down on Gaza.”

The organizations noted that “the demand for an energy embargo is integral to the call from Palestinian trade unions to stop arming Israel,” which they said “has already elicited an enormous global response.”

The call also includes previous demands from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and extends “to all trade unions and workers associations, and transportation and ports workers…in oil, gas, and metals producing countries” to stop feeding the Israeli military’s onslaught against the people of Gaza. 

The joint statement, initially published on Progressive International, a global network of legislatures as well as activists focused on international justice set up by the American politician Bernie Sanders calls on environmental activists, workers, human rights groups, civil society and states to take on the moral high ground.

The measures that the groups are immediately seeking are:

Stop all energy exports to Israel.

End all imports of Israeli energy. 

Divest from extraction projects and joint ventures with Israeli energy corporations.   

Stop all energy exports from the Middle East and global majority countries to the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and other imperialist states supporting Israel in its campaign of genocide.

The organizations who penned the letter include the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, Disrupt Power.ps, Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON), and the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD).

They underline that energy embargoes forced by trade unions and popular global demand “have proven to play a significant role in anti-colonial history”. 

“Today, they offer new means of enforcing international law and impelling the Israeli machine to cease its murder.”

The signatories to the letter stress that this can be implemented in many ways: taking action in workplaces, at ports, outside oil companies, and in any arena in which energy flows to Israel. 

The statement concludes with a call on supporters of the Palestinian cause for justice and freedom as well as environmentalists, and people of conscience around the world to take effective measures and “to move without hesitation to disrupt the flow of energy making Israel’s genocide possible.”

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

The level of death, destruction and starvation in Gaza has reached a point not seen since the establishment of Israel and has coincided with another major failure by the international community to hold Tel Aviv accountable for its crimes after nearly five months. 

This is despite the repeatedly harrowing warnings being issued by the United Nations.