Bethlehem -

Since the seventies of the last century, Palestinian Salama Balu Thawabet has been trying with others to obtain licenses from the Israeli occupation authority to work in quarries located in areas classified as “C” in the occupied West Bank, which are under full Israeli control.

The constants His equipment extracting rocks has been confiscated dozens of times in the quarries extending in the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, which he transports either to sawmills for the manufacture of building stone, or to crushers that transform them into different types used in construction, paving streets, and others.

From one of the quarries of the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, in the southern occupied West Bank (communication sites)

Detention and fines

After storming the area, accompanied by trucks, engineering teams and workers, the occupation confiscates valuable technical equipment, according to its constants, including rock-cutting saws, bulldozers, etc. For Al-Jazeera Net - 50,000 shekels (about 15 thousand US dollars), in addition to the costs of the storming carried out by him, and this procedure applies to hundreds of Palestinians who work in the stone and marble industry.

The Director-General of the Federation of Stone and Marble Industry in Palestine, Shadi Shaheen, says that 1160 licensed facilities work in this sector, and they export the equivalent of 180 million dollars annually to the Israeli market and international markets, and this number is the total export, not profits, because its profits are in sharp decline as a result of the high cost of production. The presence of external competition.

There are 20,000 workers in the stone and marble industry - according to Shaheen - whose contribution constitutes a third of the contribution of the industrial sectors in Palestine, which amounts to 4.5%, describing this sector as a white treasure and an opportunity that prevents Palestinians from benefiting from investment in it under the pretext that quarries are located in classified areas "NS".

The occupation army permanently storms the Palestinian quarry areas on the pretext that they are unlicensed and confiscate their equipment (communication sites)

quarry settlement

The occupation stresses this sector by preventing obtaining licenses or even conducting research to reach areas where the rock is suitable for the stone industry, as Undersecretary of the Ministry of National Economy Manal Farhan tells Al Jazeera Net.

Farhan points out that the occupation is also seeking to control this sector by imposing more complications on Palestinian work in it, and has started tenders to open quarries in the occupied West Bank for settlement.

This is what was revealed by the head of the Maps Department and expert in settlement affairs, Khalil Al-Tafkaji, who told Al-Jazeera Net that the occupation recently announced a scheme under No. 51/1 for mining and stone, through which 16 thousand dunums will be confiscated within Area C, which the occupation seeks to control in favor of establishing Quarries, crushers and saws therein.

Al-Tafkaji says that the occupation previously used the classification of Palestinian lands as state land or closed for military training or nature reserves, and now it seeks to open these quarries, build road networks for them, operate and control them as other ways of settlement expansion.

This has several benefits for Israel, according to Al-Tafkaji, including closing the crushers and quarries inside the occupied territories and transferring them to the West Bank, thus gaining the approval of the Israeli organizations that demand environmental preservation, and controlling large areas of land classified as “C”, as well as controlling the stone industry that It is famous for the Palestinians.

The occupation army permanently confiscates Palestinian quarry equipment on the pretext that it is unlicensed (communication sites)

settlement in cemeteries

The occupation has also published contradictions to the opening of Jewish cemeteries in Area C, according to Al-Tafkaji, which are ways to gain more control over the land, because it is known from the occupation authority that the presence of a Jewish grave means preventing work on transferring ownership of the land to the Palestinians in any future solution, as happens in The Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem, from which they could not remove any graves, but Islamic graves are permissible for them.

Al-Tafkaji considered these methods innovative and imposing a fait accompli to implement the "deal of the century", but in new ways, through the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources, as is happening in the field of agriculture in the Palestinian Jordan Valley, where Israel has investments estimated at $850 million.

The direction will be to expand the Palestinian quarries, which extend today over 3,000 dunams, from Al-Zahiriyah in the south to Jenin in the north, and to control their production, or to open new ones for settlement expansion, according to Al-Tafkaji, arguing that there is no political solution to impose a new fait accompli on the Palestinians, and to gain more lands from the areas "C", which amounts to more than 60% of the area of ​​the occupied West Bank, and the exploitation of marketing stone and marble to the Arab Gulf, which is the good consumer of it, after the recent normalization agreements.