On 9 September 2019, Israel’s National Infrastructure Committee (NIC) approved a wind energy project on agricultural lands, largely apple and cherry orchards, owned by the Syrian residents of the remaining villages in the occupied Golan. The project, which is slated to be built by Israeli company ’Energix Renewable Energies’ (Energix), is expected to occupy about 4,300 dunams (about 1,100 acres), nearly a quarter of the agricultural land that Syrians still control...The Israeli state...approved this project ignoring hundreds of objections submitted by Syrian agriculture cooperatives and individuals...The objections were filed on behalf of 11 Syrian agricultural cooperatives and civil society groups, which represent thousands of native Syrians...

Energix’s project...would have serious consequences for the health and safety of Syrian communities as a result of dangerous exposure to infrasound and flickering...According to experts on the fields of agriculture, renewable energy, environment and physics, the project will also lead to irreparable destruction of their traditional agriculture economy of apples and cherries...the project would heavily restrict the expansion of three of the five remaining Syrian villages in the Golan after 1967 (Majdal Shams, Buq’ata and Masada). This will exacerbate the suffocating housing crisis in the Syrian villages, distort the natural landscape, and threaten wildlife in the region...

We, the undersigned organisations, condemn Energix’s project because of its serious repercussions on all aspects of Syrians’ lives in the Golan, and its aims to cement the economic occupation of the Golan..