Israel is violating international law by exploiting the West Bank’s mineral resources for its own benefit, an Israeli human rights group charged in a court petition Monday.
In the petition filed to Israel’s Supreme Court, the Yesh Din group charges that 75 percent of the rock and gravel removed from 11 West Bank rock quarries is transferred to Israel. The group is demanding a halt to all Israeli mining activity in the West Bank.
The mining activities are illegal and executed though brutal economic exploitation of occupied territory for the economic needs of the State of Israel, the occupying power, reads the petition.
Israel, which occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, denies any violations. The West Bank is home to some 2.4 million Palestinians and around 280,000 Israeli settlers.
Citing a military document, the petition says 9 million of the 12 million tons of gravel removed from West Bank quarries yearly are sold in Israel. The petition demands that Israel stop granting West Bank concessions to Israeli companies and not renew existing licenses.
The military began issuing West Bank quarry permits to Israeli and international companies in the 1970s, but Israeli courts have never examined the permits’ legality, said Shlomy Zachary, one of the lawyers behind the petition.
International law dictates that an occupying power must manage resources in occupied territory without damaging them, he said, a principle sometimes referred to as picking the fruits without cutting down the tree.
This principle is impossible to observe in mining operations, he said. It is an irreparable situation since most of the fruits of the land are being taken and will never be able to be returned, he said.
Military spokesman Miki Galin said the approval procedures for quarries are in line with the relevant directives of international law and Israel’s interim accords with the Palestinians.
At this time the Civil Administration is carrying out staff work to evaluate the up-to-date policy regarding the operation of the quarries, he said.
Palestinians consider the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip essential parts of their future state.
40-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud al-Abbasi stands amid the rubble of his home after it was demolished by the Jerusalem municipality in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. Photograph: Gali Tibbon
7 March 2009
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.
The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and weakening support for peace talks. “Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making,” says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.
The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: “Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications.”
“Israeli ‘facts on the ground’ – including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions – increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank,” the report says.
The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as “unhelpful”, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.
The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are “illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism.” The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says.
It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city’s residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure.
Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said.
City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as “a disinformation campaign”. “Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias,” the mayor’s office said after Clinton’s visit.
However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a “rapid pace”. Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem.
The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls.
The goal, it says, is to “create territorial contiguity” between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to “sever” East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank.
There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were “one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process”, the report says.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. “East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967,” he said. “We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population.
Palestinian farmer has heart attack while Israeli forces cut down his olive trees. Three international and two Israeli activists arrested from demonstration.
8th March 2009, Rastira, Qalqilya region: A Palestinian farmer has had a heart attack while Israeli forces cut down olive trees on his and other farmers’ lands in the village of Rastira, Qalqilya region. Medics treated him at the scene for over an hour before he returned home to rest.
Two Israeli and three international solidarity, from the US, Denmark and Sweden, have also been arrested and taken to an Israeli police station in the settlement of Qedumim after they joined villagers from Rastira, Wadi Ar-Rasha and Dhab’a in protest over the Israeli destruction of the region’s olive trees.
Residents from the area, joined by Israeli and international activists, were protesting the cutting down of olive trees due to the Israeli plans to change the route of the Apartheid Wall in the area.
The Israeli forces are chaining up the trees and cutting them down. Just before, they gave everyone five minutes to leave the area, but then straight away went and took the Israelis and internationals. Women from the village have just come out to the fields and are throwing shoes at the soldiers. Israel is destroying more of the village’s land for the settlements. – Tom Patterson (USA) International Solidarity Movement
The villages of Rastira, Wadi Ar-Rasha and Dhab’a are completely surrounded by both Israel’s Apartheid Wall and the illegal Israeli settlements of Alfe Menashe.
At around 6:30 this morning a group of students from Brighton locked themselves to Carmel Agrexco, the Israeli state owned export company, to protest against their complicity in the illegal annexation of the West Bank and the repression of students in the Palestinian village of Jayyous.
Carmel Agrexco grows and imports agricultural produce (including fruit, vegetables and flowers) from illegal settlements in the West Bank which are then sold in supermarkets such as Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and many others. As such, companies such as Carmel Agrexco are responsible for the systematic annexation of Palestinian land.
In these settlements workers, including children, are known to work in slave-labor conditions, with low wages, inadequate access to food and water, and no contract. Furthermore, the settlements have not only stolen land, but use up much needed agricultural resources such as water.
This action has been done in response to a callout for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, after the events of 18th February and onwards in Jayyous. On this day, occupying Israeli Defence Force soldiers invaded the town of Jayyous, where regular protests have been held against the building of the apartheid wall, which will annex 5,585 dunums (558.5 hectares) of land from the town, much of which is to be used for the expansion of the illegal settlement, Zufim.
75 soldiers and 25 army jeeps invaded the town in the early hours of the morning, conducting house to house raids: throwing sound-bombs at houses before forcing families out at gunpoint and ransacking their houses. At least 75 people were arrested, the vast majority students, including the entire student Stop the Wall Committee. Those arrested were taken to a school that the army had turned into a detention centre. Most of the people were blindfolded and handcuffed and all were forced to sit in stress positions. They were not allowed to eat, drink or talk to each other as they were taken in for interrogation one by one. They were held for as much as 19 hours and 15 young men were taken to Huwarra military base on unknown charges. Bulldozers were then brought in which created blockades at the entrances to the town and the population were put under curfew for 18 hours.
Since then, the village has been invaded two further times, on the second time a half-day curfew was imposed on the town. Residents have also been threatened with home demolitions.
James Robinson, one of the protesters, said
The situation in Jayyous is demonstrative of the systematic human rights abuses perpetrated against the Palestinians for the expansion of the settlements which Carmel Agrexco supports and profits from.
On Friday the 6th of March protesters from ISM Sweden joined with other activists in a peaceful demonstration outside the arena in Malmö, Sweden, where the Davis Cup matches between Sweden and Israel are being played.
Activists participated in street theater, spoke to media and passers-by, and shouted out their anger and frustration outside the enclosed area around the arena, which is being guarded by one of the largest police contingencies in Swedish history. Debate about the matches has been hot in Sweden the last few weeks, and the ISM sees their work during the weekend as part of an international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The matches are being played without audiences – a partial victory for the campaign run by a broad coalition of political parties, cultural groups and organisations that has been working since the beginning of the Gaza massacre.
The demonstration was a clear statement against the opening of the Davis Cup weekend in Malmö, especially through work with the national and international media. Instead of getting caught in the hype about perceived threats of violence against the matches, ISMers managed to raise the critical issues at hand, namely the daily situation of millions of Palestinians and the inappropriateness of welcoming representatives of the state of Israel to a city where many inhabitants have lost friends and family in the Israeli massacre on Gaza. Matches are scheduled during the whole weekend, and manifestations and rallies are planned to continue, the largest one on Saturday expecting to gather around 10.000 protesters. The ISM are proud to have been present from the start to show our disgust of the decision to welcome Israeli tennis players to Sweden, and to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Palestine.
Stop the match! Boycott Israel!
