A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #470 - GASOLINE ON THE FIRE. - From Augusta to Gaza, wars and genocides also pass through Sicily. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Augusta is not Gaza. And yet, for one evening, the distance between the 
Mediterranean's largest industrial harbor, made of lights, poisons, and 
money, and the rubble of Palestine seemed to shrink almost to the point 
of disappearing, in a worrying yet terribly real way. A dark thread ties 
Augusta to Gaza, places colonized in different ways. But the violence of 
capitalism and its puppets is creative in its oppression and 
unscrupulous extraction. This thread is not invisible, nor is it an 
ideological position; it is a thread made of oil tankers, refineries, 
military infrastructure, economic interests, contracts between powerful 
people, and decisions made far from the communities who suffer the 
consequences, tamed by bribes and often starvation wages. This was the 
topic addressed on Saturday, May 30, at the Piano Terra association in 
the Piana district, during the debate "Benzina sul Fuoco," which 
featured Report journalist Manuele Bonaccorsi and journalist Luisa 
Santangelo.
The initiative was inspired by the eponymous investigation aired on 
Report, a journalistic work that helped raise disturbing questions about 
the role of Italian refineries, and Sicilian ones in particular, in 
supplying fuel to parties involved in the conflict in Palestine. This 
issue isn't just about international trade or geopolitics, but directly 
affects the relationship between territories and war.
For those living in eastern Sicily, this topic is far from abstract. For 
decades, Augusta, Priolo, and Melilli have represented one of the 
Mediterranean's main energy hubs. A territory devastated by industrial 
pollution and mafia-run contracts, transformed into a sacrifice zone in 
the name of development and profit (always the same ones). Today, 
another dimension of that same reality is emerging with ever greater 
clarity: the possible involvement of Sicilian oil infrastructure in the 
logistics chains that fuel armed conflicts and genocides. Reports in 
collaboration with Greenpeace have documented how, since 2024, shipments 
of fuel and petroleum products have departed from Italy, including to 
companies collaborating with the Israeli military during the Palestinian 
genocide. Among the cases that have emerged is that of ISAB, the 
petrochemical complex in Priolo, Sicily, from which at least five 
shipments of fuel are said to have departed between 2024 and 2026, 
destined for ORL Bazan, an Israeli energy giant involved in supplying 
the Israeli armed forces.
Faced with a conflict that continues to severely impact the civilian 
population, the question concerns not only the responsibilities of the 
Israeli government, but also those of the countries and companies that 
indirectly support its operations. If international law (which, 
according to Tajani, applies up to a certain point) requires states not 
to encourage or contribute to human rights violations and wars against 
civilians, how was it possible that these supplies continued to flow 
unhindered? Who authorized, tolerated, or chose to ignore this 
trafficking? The anarchist movement has always denounced the structural 
nature of war within the capitalist and state system.
Wars are not born from hatred between peoples but from the interests of 
states, industries, and economic elites that transform territories and 
people into expendable tools. But every modern conflict is supported by 
a gigantic civil and industrial infrastructure: fuel, transportation, 
ports, telecommunications, finance. The bombs that fall on civilian 
populations do not appear out of nowhere. Behind them exists a global 
network of complicity that spans continents and borders-your children, 
our sisters, and ourselves.
When a territory (Sicily, for example) is integrated into the production 
chains of war, political responsibility also falls to those who live and 
travel through that territory. This is not to assign collective blame, 
but to affirm the need to know, understand, and oppose. The 
petrochemical plants of Augusta, let's be clear, don't just produce 
capitalist poisons, but military oil that kills. We've known this for 
some time; there's a line connecting Augusta to Sigonella. For example, 
between 2017 and 2019, there were several thefts of military fuel along 
the military pipeline (known as "GP5"). Investigations have uncovered 
specialized gangs who operated by drilling into the underground pipeline.
It makes one think that someone probably went astray, some corrupt 
dealings between powerful people, and they took responsibility. From 
this perspective, Sicily has a long tradition of antimilitarist 
struggles that today take on an extraordinary relevance once again. Our 
thoughts inevitably turn to the experience of the No MUOS movement, one 
of the most important popular mobilizations of recent decades. Thousands 
of people, in Niscemi and across the island, challenged governments, 
militaries, and international strategic interests to denounce Sicily's 
role as a military platform in the Mediterranean. In that struggle, a 
simple truth was affirmed: the militarization of territories does not 
produce security, but war; it protects not populations, but the 
geopolitical interests of powers.
The same motivations that inspired the struggle against MUOS speak today 
to the mobilizations against the war in Palestine. Because the problem 
isn't just about military bases. It's about the entire system that makes 
wars possible. It's about the ports used for the trafficking of 
strategic materials, the industries that fuel the war industry, the 
energy infrastructure that supports the military. It's about an economic 
model that continues to present itself as inevitable while unloading its 
social and human costs onto the most vulnerable communities. During the 
Augusta debate, the importance of independent information as a tool of 
counter-power emerged forcefully. Journalistic investigations have the 
merit of piercing the veil of invisibility that often protects economic 
and military interests. But information alone is not enough. We need a 
society capable of organizing itself, of building relationships of 
solidarity, of developing practices of grassroots resistance.
This is the terrain on which anarchism continues to offer a radical and 
necessary perspective. Faced with the barbarity of war, anarchists do 
not choose one state front over another.
They do not side with armies, governments, or nationalisms. They choose 
peoples over states. They choose communities over military apparatuses. 
They choose international solidarity over the logic of borders and 
competition. From Augusta to Gaza, from Niscemi to the Mediterranean 
ports, the stakes remain the same: to steal territories, resources, and 
human lives from the war machine. In an era where rearmament is 
presented as a necessity and militarization as a solution, meetings like 
"Benzina sul Fuoco" represent something more than a simple moment of 
reflection. They are spaces of collective awareness. Places where we try 
to rebuild the connection between what happens in the world and what 
happens on our doorstep.
Let's be clear: war doesn't start when the bombs fall; war begins long 
before: in boardrooms, ministries, ports, refineries, military bases. 
And yes, even in voting for the lesser evil, a political party that will 
never represent the people but simply the usual elites that allow power 
exchanges to the detriment of humanity, solidarity, and empathy between 
peoples. Peace will never be the result of government decisions; it will 
arise, as always, from the ability of communities to organize from the 
bottom up, oppose the logic of domination, and build relationships based 
on freedom, equality, and mutual support.

Gabriel Cammarata

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