JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court has frozen implementation of a law legalizing dozens of Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land, which the UN labelled a “thick red line.”
Court documents seen by AFP Friday show that Judge Neal Hendel issued Thursday an open-ended restraining order suspending a bill passed by parliament that would retroactively legalize a number of outposts across the occupied West Bank.
The decision was in response to a petition brought by 17 Palestinian local councils on whose land the settlements are built.
Israeli and Palestinian rights groups were also parties to the petition.
Hendel wrote in his decision that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had asked him to grant the order.
It did not specify a time limit but demanded that Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, deliver its response by September 10 and that Mandelblit submit an opinion by October 16.
The act, known as the “legalization law,” was passed in February and brought immediate condemnation from around the world.
International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes between those it sanctions and those it does not — so-called outposts.
Mandelblit himself warned the government the law could be unconstitutional and risked exposing Israel to international prosecution for war crimes.
UN envoy for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov said following the February Knesset vote the bill set a “very dangerous precedent.”
“This is the first time the Israeli Knesset legislates in the occupied Palestinian lands and particularly on property issues,” he told AFP at the time.
“That crosses a very thick red line.”
The act allows Israel to appropriate Palestinian private land on which settlers built without knowing it was private property or because the state allowed them to do so.
Palestinian landowners whose property was taken for settlers would be compensated with cash or given alternative plots.
Palestinians said the law was a means to “legalize theft” and France called it a “new attack on the two-state solution.”
Some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government advocate the annexation of much of the West Bank, a move that would end any hope of an independent Palestinian state.
Mladenov said that the “legalization law” could be a prelude to that.
“It opens the potential for the full annexation of the West Bank and therefore undermines substantially the two-state solution,” he said after its passing.
Israel freezes controversial settlement law
Israel freezes controversial settlement law
Famed Jerusalem stone still sells despite economic woes
- Quarries account for 4.5% of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers
- Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial civilian control over some of the West Bank, is on the brink of bankruptcy
SAIR, West Bank: Despite the catastrophic state of the Palestinian economy, Faraj Al-Atrash, operator of a quarry in the occupied West Bank, proudly points to an armada of machines busy eating away at sheer walls of dusty white rock that stretch into the distance.
“This here is considered the main source of revenue for the entire region,” Atrash said at the site near the town of Beit Fajjar, close to the city of Hebron.
The quarry is a source of Jerusalem stone, the famed pale rock used throughout the Holy Land and beyond for millennia and which gives much of the region its distinctive architectural look. But Atrash, in his fifties, said “our livelihood is constantly under threat.”
“Lately, I feel like the occupation (Israel) has begun to fight us on the economic front,” he said.
Atrash fears the confiscation of the quarry’s industrial equipment, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinian financial crisis.
The Palestinian territories are “currently going through the most severe economic crisis ever recorded,” according to a UN report.
“There are problems with exports and market access because we used to export most of the stone to Israel, and after the Gaza war begun, we ran into difficulties,” explained Ibrahim Jaradat, whose family has owned a quarry for more than 40 years near Sair, also near Hebron.
Public services are functioning worse than ever, Atrash said, adding that fixed costs such as water and electricity had soared.
Quarries account for 4.5 percent of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers, according to the Hebron Chamber of Commerce.
Around 65 percent of exports are destined for the Israeli market, where some municipalities mandate the use of Jerusalem stone. “The people who buy the stones from us to resell them to construction sites are mostly Israelis,” said Abu Walid Riyad Gaith, a 65-year-old quarry operator. He lamented a lack of solidarity from Arab countries, which he said do not buy enough of the rock.
Most of the roughly 300 quarries in the West Bank are located in Area C, land which falls under full Israeli authority and covers the vast majority of its settlements.
“Many (Israeli) settlers pass through here, and if Israel annexes Palestine, it will start with these areas,” said one operator.
The physical demands of working in a quarry are intense, but for many Palestinians there are few other options as the West Bank’s economy wilts.
“We are working ourselves to death,” Atrash said, pointing to his ten laborers moving back and forth in monumental pits where clouds of dust coat them in a white film.
In the neighboring quarry, blinking and coughing as he struggled with the intense work was a former geography teacher.
With the Palestinian Authority’s budget crisis meaning he was no longer receiving his salary, he had looked for work in the only local place still hiring.
All the laborers said they suffered from back, eye and throat problems. “We call it white gold,” said Laith Derriyeh, employed by a stonemason, “because it normally brings in substantial amounts of money. But today everything is complicated; it’s very difficult to think about the future.”
He added: “People have no money, and those who do are afraid to build,” he added.
