RAMALLAH, West Bank: Three-quarters of the rock and gravel quarried in the West Bank are transferred out of Palestinian territory and used by Israelis, a human rights group said yesterday, charging Israel’s government with violating international law.
The Yesh Din group said the mining exploits a vital nonrenewable resource that could serve a future Palestinian state, and asked Israel’s Supreme Court to stop it.
The mining activities are “illegal and executed through brutal economic exploitation of occupied territory for the economic needs of the State of Israel, the occupying power,” according to the court appeal.
Citing a military document, Yesh Din said nine million of the 12 million tons of gravel removed from West Bank quarries every year are sold in Israel. The appeal 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.
Israel has claimed that international law over occupation does not apply in the West Bank, because its legal status has never been determined. In recent years, however, Israeli doves and even some hawkish leaders have come around to supporting an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank.
