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ENVIRONMENT: Israel Stripping West Bank Quarries
By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Apr 30 (IPS) - Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din is taking the Israeli Defence Forces
(IDF), the Israeli civil administration and a number of Israeli mining companies
to court.
The rights group alleges they are illegally stripping Palestinian West Bank
quarries of raw construction material for the benefit of the Israeli
construction industry and the building of illegal Israeli settlements.
Yesh Din has lodged a petition against the commander of the Israeli Defence
Forces (IDF), the Israeli civil administration and the mining companies with
the Israeli high court.
The Israeli mining companies involved operate under the jurisdiction of the
IDF and the civil administration, which issue the requisite mining permits.
In its petition the rights group accuses them of the "illegal practice of brutal
economic exploitation of a conquered territory to serve the exclusive
economic needs of the occupying power that bluntly and directly violates
basic principles of customary international law."
"Israel is transferring natural resources from the West Bank for Israeli
benefit, and this is absolutely prohibited not only under international law but
according to Israeli Supreme Court rulings," says Michael Sfard, lawyer for
Yesh Din, which brought the case to Israel's high court.
"This is illegal transfer of land in the most literal of senses."
International law as outlined by the Hague Regulation 55 states that an
occupying power is only permitted to administer public buildings, real estate,
forest and the agricultural estates of the state it is occupying.
The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First
and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands in 1899 and
1907, respectively.
Together with the Geneva Conventions, these were among the first formal
statements of the laws of war and war crimes.
International law further stipulates that an occupying power has to pay the
occupied territory a lease should it profit from operations on its land, as well
as a percentage of the profits reaped therefrom.
"The profits from the quarries should be going back into the Palestinian
economy and Palestinian businesses should be benefiting from them, not
Israeli companies. This is not happening," said Jamil Mtoor, deputy chairman
of the Palestinian Environmental Authority (PEA) in Ramallah.
"Israel's removal of rocks, sand and gravel from the West Bank quarries is
negatively impacting the West Bank in other ways as well," Mtoor told IPS.
"The quarries are damaging the ecological balance and biodiversity of the
area's flora and fauna. They are also causing damage to agricultural land as
it takes time to rehabilitate the land at the quarried areas to the point where
it is fit again for agricultural use," said Mtoor.
"Furthermore, the pollution levels associated with the quarries are adversely
affecting the health of Palestinians, with increased levels of asthma,
particularly amongst children, in the vicinity of the mining."
Israel has strict laws governing noise and dust levels associated with quarries
inside Israel. This is one of the reasons that makes operating in the West
Bank attractive for Israeli mining companies, as the Palestinian Authority (PA)
is unable to enforce environmental laws on Israel which controls the
territory.
Israel has long argued that its occupation of the Palestinian West Bank is
primarily for security reasons.
However, the international community counters that the occupation enables
the continued expropriation of Palestinian resources such as land, water and
raw construction material, primarily for the expansion and establishment of
new illegal Israeli settlements.
A significant portion of the settlements are built from stones carved out of
the West Bank landscape. But the bulk of the raw construction material goes
back for use within the green line, the internationally recognised border
which divides Israel proper from the West Bank.
Israel has a shortage of construction material such as sand, gravel and
boulders. An Israeli government study last year predicted a serious shortage
of raw building materials within a decade. A number of building constructors
have been caught stealing truckloads of building material from the Negev
desert in the middle of the night.
The ten West Bank quarries that are the focus of Yesh Din's lawsuit provide
Israel with a quarter, or 12 million tonnes, of its annual needs of 44 million
tonnes of construction material.
Furthermore, three-quarters of what is quarried in the West Bank goes to
Israel. The Palestinian market purchases the remainder. Further research by
Yesh Din indicates that the Israeli government plans to continue such
operations for at least the next three decades.
According to a 2003 assessment by Palestinian officials, the main debtors,
including the Israeli Defence Ministry, the World Zionist Organisation, the
mining companies and Israeli gas stations owe the Palestinians millions of
dollars.
"The Israelis are stealing our natural resources, and this is against the Oslo
Agreement," says Raed Abed Rabbo from the Applied Research Institute
Jerusalem (ARIJ), which researches and documents the effects of the Israeli
occupation in the Palestinian territories.
ARIJ will be working alongside Yesh Din as their Palestinian partner in the
fight against the continued exploitation of the West Bank's quarries.
"It is imperative that the implications of this continued mining is made
public. Up till now the full impact of this has not been fully assessed and
studied, and there is not enough awareness about the problem at
governmental levels. We intend to change this," Abed Rabbo told IPS.
(END/2009)
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