Energy Embargo for Palestine is an anti-imperialist climate collective based in Britain. On Monday 11^th November, they are organising a rally outside the Turkish embassy in London in London at 5.30pm. There is also a demonstration, organised by Youth Front for Palestine, outside the Turkish consulate in Manchester at 6pm. Both protests are part of the first global day of action calling on Türkiye, which supplies 50% of ‘Israel’’s oil, to impose an embargo.

NSWhat prompted you to set up Energy Embargo for Palestine?

EEWe launched Energy Embargo for Palestine in the wake of Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza and after identifying the gaps around targeting energy in the climate and Palestine solidarity movements.

Back in October 2023, several notable climate groups refused to sign an open letter which called for a “principled solidarity with Palestine that connects climate justice with the struggles of colonised peoples worldwide.” From what we observed, this refusal stemmed from a lack of principled anti-imperialist politics to guide their analysis of climate justice and respective campaigns.

As organisers that have always viewed our Palestine solidarity activism as being central to climate justice, we recognised the urgency to make clear the intersections between global capital, imperialism, Zionism, and environmental destruction. Our aim was to influence anti-imperialist politics in the climate movement and to show how oil and militarism go hand in hand.

In seeking to target energy from the imperial core, we have taken inspiration from a long lineage of Palestinian resistance and grassroots embargos on BP and Shell for fuelling South African Apartheid. During the 1936-39 Revolution, Palestinians targeted energy pipelines built by the British and Zionist settlers. For over 75 years, it has been clear that we cannot rely on the moral conscience of states that prop up ‘Israel’ as an imperial outpost in the Middle East and facilitate its genocide and aggression on Palestinians and Arabs. Energy is a crucial target — from the way it powers domestic arms production and settlements in occupied land — in being able to weaken Zionism ourselves from the belly of the beast.

Since launching we have campaigned against BP’s operations, through their social licence to operate and institutional partnerships. This campaign has involved taking action and disrupting the British Museum on its busiest days, demanding that they end their partnership with BP, and organising political education with workers, Palestine solidarity and climate activists, and students on institutional links with BP.

In our extensive research on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline supply chain, we identified that the BP-owned pipeline makes up almost 30% of Israel’s oil imports and that the crude oil transported to Israel is then refined into military-grade jet fuel for the Israeli military. In this analysis, we identified that BP is directly fuelling Israel’s genocide and the BTC pipeline is actually headquartered in Britain. Ahead of COP29 being held in Azerbaijan - known as the “BP country of Azerbaijan” where the oil for the BTC pipeline is extracted from - we have identified the necessity to work with groups internationally who have also targeted BP to expose on a public stage each different actor in this pipeline to genocide.

NSHow can people get involved?

EEWe have a mixture of public-facing events, including workshops, assemblies and mass mobilisations. Mass mobilisations are an important aspect of our organising efforts as they are the way we bring people into our work whilst disrupting operations for our institutional targets, such as the British Museum.

For people who want to get more involved in our organising, we invite people to follow our social media pages and attend our public facing events.

NSCan you tell us about Monday’s action?

EEThis action forms the first global day of action within the “BP and SOCAR, Stop Fuelling Genocide” campaign, which we have launched alongside Filistin İçin 1000 Genç and Global Energy Embargo for Palestine. The emergence of this new international campaign is premised on the knowledge we have gained on our opposition - those who continue to operate the imperialist energy supply chain that ‘Israel’ depends on to persist with its genocide against Palestinians. Through months of study and research, as well as our collaboration with our comrades from Filistin İçin 1000 Genç, we have concluded there is a need to spread our call for an energy embargo on ‘Israel’ even further.

On Monday we will witness demonstrations erupting outside Turkish embassies all over the world, including in Croatia, Ireland, Spain, Japan, the US and here in Britain. These demonstrations will share a clear message - Türkiye, stop fuelling genocide. This international, public and grassroots pressure will confront Türkiye’s hypocritical position on Palestine.

We have studied our targets through months of research alongside our mobilising efforts. The priority corporate and state actors that we have identified, BP, SOCAR, Azerbaijan and Türkiye, have a wide reach with well-established international reputations. To hold these powers to account, we know we must think beyond the limits of our immediate locales and engage in a practice of uniting Climate and Palestine groups on this issue.

This is not escalation for the sake of being noisier about the genocide, but rather a strategic and calculated step that has necessitated international coalition, which serves as preparation for the future cross-border organising needed to hold those facilitating genocide to account.

NSWhy do you think energy is potentially a weak link in the genocidal chain and worth focusing our efforts on?

EEWe do not think that energy is necessarily a weak link in the genocidal chain but rather the lifesource of the ‘Israeli’ war machine. Historically, energy, particularly continued extraction of fossil fuels, has been a key component of imperialism and maintaining capitalist-imperialist order. During the British mandate, Zionist settlers had first built extensive electricity grids across Palestine to fuel the settlements they were building on occupied land. Energy was crucial in both consolidating Zionist settler-colonialism but also in the resistance to it, as Ghassan Kanafani writes.

When we look at current regional resistance, we can see that Yemen’s humanitarian intervention in blockading ‘Israel’ in the Red Sea actually disrupted global trade. BP ships at some point halted their shipments through the Red Sea. When “climate criminals” and “big polluters”, as the climate movement calls them, are fuelling a genocide through oil shipments whilst signing licences to further exploit gas in Palestinian waters, we must disrupt energy supply chains to forcibly halt and weaken the ‘Israeli’ war machine.

In Britain, we can see much of the broader solidarity movement strategically shifting to three main focuses: arms, logistics, and energy. Palestine Action have shut down arms factories, Workers for a Free Palestine have picketed arms factories, and the Palestinian Youth Movement have launched their Mask Off Maersk campaign targeting the logistics giant Maersk. We are strategically targeting energy through our focus and pressure on BP, because it is directly facilitating this genocide, and has deep links with social, political, and cultural institutions across Britain.

NSWhy is Türkiye the focus and what pressure do you think can be brought to bear in Britain?

EEThe Turkish government has branded itself as a state supportive of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. This contradicts the reality that 50% of the total oil ‘Israel’ imports passes through Türkiye - either via Turkish seas or directly shipped from its ports.

The state’s failure to intervene in the oil shipped to ‘Israel’ stands as a grave hypocrisy. In addition, it has been reported that Türkiye continues to trade with ‘Israel’ via third party actors, like Greece and the Palestinian Authority.

In recent months, Colombia halted their supply of coal to ‘Israel’ following pressure made by Colombian trade unions, Indigenous groups and the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine. As well as targeting BP and SOCAR with groups internationally, we want to deepen existing contradictions on a global stage over their supposed support for Palestine.

Since the wake of October, our comrades in Filistin İçin 1000 Genç have additionally faced state violence and repression for pressuring the state to “close the valves to genocide”. In the history of the BTC pipeline, we can see the British state’s role in lobbying for this pipeline through the “Contract of the Century” and in the current way that BP is the largest operator and stakeholder of the BTC pipeline. It is our duty in Britain to disrupt the BTC pipeline supply chain which is headquartered here and to pressure all actors including Azerbaijan, Türkiye, BP and SOCAR.

NSHow does the action and the group connect with other struggles?

EEPalestine is an anti-imperialist struggle and has historically been a banner for all national liberation struggles across the world.

In launching our international campaign and identifying both COP29 and the Turkish embassy as targets, it was always important for us to connect to Kurdish and Armenian communities that have resisted the brunt of Turkish state violence and ethnic cleansing projects. We are organising closely with ARMOR Coalition (Armenian Organised Resistance) that are based in New York and we will be making links between the Palestinian and Armenian struggles in our rally.

Over 25 groups have additionally endorsed our Turkish embassy rally, including Climate Justice Coalition, XR for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, Anakbayan, Union of Cypriots and the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (Britain). Both in this action and our work, we try to emphasise an ecological analysis to anti-imperialism and to the Palestinian struggle, and unite climate groups with Palestinian and national liberation groups. This is because we understand that the national liberation of states that are subordinated to colonialism and imperialism is a prerequisite for a global, just ecological transition. Otherwise, the green transition will be built on the graves of the masses of the Global South.

NSWhat plans do you have after Monday’s action?

EEAs well as Monday’s action, we have been organising with climate groups for the March for Global Climate Justice on Saturday 16th November in London. We will be marching from the British Museum, which holds a key institutional partnership with BP, to SOCAR HQ - exposing the key actors of the BTC pipeline. We will finish at Downing Street, protesting against British state support for ‘Israel’ and the British political establishment’s connections with BP and the BTC Pipeline.

We have coordinated this march with groups internationally as part of the “BP and SOCAR, stop fuelling genocide” campaign and really encourage all people to join us. After COP, we will continue in organising our BP campaign in Britain, hosting political education workshops on energy and imperialism, and pursuing more coalition work with climate and Palestine solidarity groups in Britain and internationally.

NSIf people can’t come along to the London action on Monday, how can they get involved?

EEFor any comrades based in and around Manchester, Youth Front for Palestine will be organising a protest outside of the Turkish consulate on Monday November 11th.

For anyone wanting to organise their own rally and action, we encourage you to read our international call to action where we call on groups to organise an action outside of BP and SOCAR headquarters, offices and subsidiaries. This map includes some key SOCAR and BP institutions across Britain.

Follow our social media pages for more information on how to get involved beyond COP.