High Court sanctions looting: Israeli quarries in the West Bank

[Jefferson23]

16 Jan. '12

The resources of an occupied territory are supposed to be used to benefit the local population, unless they are needed for an urgent military purpose. However, in a judgment given on 26 December 2011, Israel's High Court of Justice established a new rule enabling the state and private Israeli enterprises to loot quarries in the West Bank. The decision completely contradicts international law and principles that have guided High Court rulings in the last thirty years. There is cause for great concern that the ruling will enable Israel to treat the West Bank and its resources as if they have been annexed to the state, without taking the human rights of Palestinians into account.

The court’s opinion, written by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch and joined by justices Miriam Na’or and Esther Hayut, was given in a petition filed by Yesh Din in March 2009 against Israeli entities operating quarries in Area C in the West Bank. On 10 January 2012, Yesh Din filed an application for rehearing, before an expanded panel, on the new rule that the judgment established.

"Assuming no political changes will occur"

Israeli quarry operations in the West Bank began in the mid-1970s. According to Civil Administration figures, there are now ten Israeli-owned quarries in Area C, eight of them active. All the quarries are in what Israel has declared "state land". According to the state’s estimates, these quarries produce some 12 million tons of mined material a year, 94 percent of which is taken to Israel. The excavated product accounts for one-quarter of Israel’s consumption of mined material.

In 2008, the national outline plan for mining and excavation sites for the construction and paving market, prepared by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, relied on the assumption that these quarries would continue to supply Israel with material for the coming 30 years, “assuming no political changes will occur in the borders of Area C.” In 2009, the quarry owners paid the Civil Administration royalties of 25 million shekels.

in full: http://www.btselem.org/settlements/20120116_hcj_ruling_on_quarries_in_wb

[azurnoir]

1. Israel has declared parts of the OPT "State Land"?

Isn't that annexing parts of the OPT?

Does Oslo allow Israel that right?

[Jefferson23]

2. Does Oslow allow that right? I would hold no, the focus

seems to be a complete departure of what the court had accepted for years as a guideline.
The use of language in part is disturbing, no?

"reasonable" use.....gee...I wonder who will benefit from that? I imagine among others, Danny Danon is pleased.


snip* The court’s “dynamic” interpretation, which seeks to modify the provisions of international law on the pretext of “reasonable” use and “prolonged occupation” can be used to sanction theft of other resources, such as the many water resources belonging to Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, where Israel carries out many water drillings that have served settlements in the area since the 1970s, mining of minerals in the northern Dead Sea on the pretext that it is “relatively limited,” or transfer of archeological finds from the occupied territory to Israel. This test may also lead to the absurd conclusion that establishment of the settlements, which international law deems unlawful in occupied territory, is permitted since the built-up area of the settlements accounts for only one percent of the West Bank and the settlements aid the Palestinians by supplying jobs and helping modernize the region.

The Fourth Geneva Convention does not make it legal for an occupying power to “transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” But they can take the resources now..as long as it's in a reasonable fashion?? hmmm.