Hundreds of impoverished Palestinian herders and farmers living in caves and tents in a remote area of the Palestinian West Bank have been provided free electricity due to the ingenuity of two Israeli physicists.
The goat and sheep farming community of Susya, comprising clans of about 25 large families, had until recently followed a centuries-old tradition of subsistence farming without access to electricity.
They have over recent years been the target of a concerted campaign by Israeli authorities to drive them off their land for the benefit of the neighbouring Israeli settlement Susya. Their community up in the hills of the southern West Bank have twice been expelled from their original homes and forced to resettle.
Electricity cables run above their homes and nearby pylons supply the Israeli settlement with power, but the Palestinian farmers and their families have been denied access to electricity, running water and other infrastructure.
The villagers have been denied use of the settlers only bypass road, and prevented from accessing much of their farm and grazing land except for a few days a year under Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) coordination. This land has been appropriated by the settlers.
But following the intervention of Comet-ME, one of 12 finalists of the BBC's World Challenge, a global competition aimed at projects showing enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level, Susya made international headlines.
Israeli physicist Elad Orian together with fellow physicist Noam Dotan, both pro-peace activists and founders of Comet-ME, have spent the last two years installing a high-grid wind and solar system free of charge in Susya.
"The core of our activity is the provision of basic energy services for off-grid communities using solar and wind power, in a way that is both environmentally and socially sustainable," Orian told IPS.
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Comet-me.org from comet-me on Vimeo.
http://www.comet-me.org/
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