Friday, February 11, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
I've been picking out random pages of the Amnesty report to see if I can find a lie or deception on every page of Amnesty's latest "apartheid" report.
Here is the beginning of that page:
Stone quarrying is Palestinians’ largest export industry, but Israel’s control of the OPT has restricted Palestinian access to these resources. In addition, Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences.[1047] Meanwhile, Israel carries out quarrying activities in the OPT, in contravention of the law of occupation.
That sentence seems to say that Israel refuses to grant permits to any new Palestinian quarries or renew their licenses as it takes over the quarries.
Footnote 1047 adds a crucial piece of information:
[T]he Israeli Civil Administrations fail[ed] to renew or grant new permits for Palestinian quarries in Area C since 1994.
Israel isn't restricting quarrying in the areas that Palestinians control - at all. Nor can it, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.
Amnesty is giving the impression of "occupation" when Israel allows full freedom for Palestinians to self-rule in the areas under their control.
Now, why might it restrict quarrying in areas that it is responsible for? Perhaps because Palestinian quarrying, while important to the Palestinian economy, is destroying the environment:
The environmental economics as related to pollution trend caused by SMI [stone and marble industry] is considerably high. This is in terms of the damages and adverse impacts caused by SMI to the environment, public health, and green cover. This can be attributed to the lack of control and monitoring system on the industry, and due to the lack of law enforcement. This requires from the Palestinian ministries and institutions in charge to undertake an evaluation of such damages and impacts resulted from the air, water, soil, and noise pollution caused by SMI. ....While the evidence from environmental and health points of view shows that pollution caused by SMI imposes an economic cost to the Palestinian society, urgent steps should be taken to control the sources of pollution originated from SMI. However, if nothing would be done to improve the industry, with respect to its laws and regulations, as well as to short-term and long-term strategies, the SMI’s impacts will be devastating.
Is Israel supposed to allow this pollution to be spread in areas under its control? Arguably, even as an "occupier," it has a responsibility to ensure safety regulations and control. And no Palestinian quarry would want to be working under Israeli regulations.
So this is a lot different than Amnesty made it look. Yes, one can interpret the phrase "Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences" as not to mean "all," but unless someone takes the time to look at the footnotes, the impression given is of a complete takeover of the industry by Israel. And as we've seen in other pages, Amnesty is actively trying to create that misconception while giving itself wiggle room that the sentence could have meant "some."
Amnesty claims it worked on this document for four years. They chose this language deliberately to deceive.
