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Halmahera is an island in Indonesia’s North Maluku province. It holds the country’s largest known reserve of nickel, a metal the world wants very much now because it is used in electric car batteries. For years, this reserve has been dug up as fast as possible, with little thought for the people who live there. Now a second problem has appeared on the same island. An Israeli-rooted company has just won a geothermal contract in Halmahera, in a country whose citizens have marched by the hundreds of thousands for Gaza, and whose government keeps saying, again and again, that it will never normalise relations with Israel. Both problems can be solved the same way. The Gulf states, not Beijing and not an Israeli firm dressed up as an American one, should be the ones building Halmahera’s future.
What is actually happening on the ground
