Quarries

Imagine that one sunny day someone opens an enormous pit next to your house so that from now on, it stands on the edge of a cliff, and a few meters of uncareful walking can lead your loved ones down a hundred-meter chasm. Imagine that your daily routine involves constant dust clouds that make simple breathing difficult and give rise to severe diseases like lung disease and cancer. Furthermore, imagine that someone pays you money so they can bring the abovementioned reality into existence and will do anything, and we mean anything, to keep you quiet.

It is probably hard to imagine that such a reality can exist, but you would be surprised – or maybe not – to see that there are Israeli residents that have to put up with such a reality firsthand. And the world is silent.

Meet the illegal stone quarries phenomenon, a widespread phenomenon that can have severe and long-term ramifications on national security, the environment, humans, and wildlife in Israel.

Judea and Samaria alone – or what is called “the Land of Illegal Quarries” – has 50 illegal quarries extended over an area of 20,000 dunams. Beyond blemishing the untarnished and primordial landscape, the stone quarries empty the mountain’s content and form massive pits that will not be disappearing anytime soon.

How do the illegal quarries work?

Eighty percent of quarries – and their accompanying facilities – in Judea and Samaria are situated in Area B, where the State of Israel does not usually intervene and concern itself with environment-related questions. Not about whether a given quarry pollutes, and not about whether the quarry undergoes rehabilitation after the quarrying activities end, as is the convention in any legitimate quarry. They operate daily unsupervised and without the necessary permits. In many cases, after the quarrying possibilities run out, the quarry owners vacate the premises without bothering to rehabilitate the land from all the damage they left behind.

The crusher – used to reduce the rocks from the quarries into crushed stone – is located in Area C and is there not by mere chance but because it is easier to transport trucks loaded with crushed stone over the green line from those territories. This reality, among other things, causes a security issue since inspecting truckloads of crushed stone in security checkpoints is virtually impossible, and smuggling almost anything into Israeli territory, as a result, becomes an uncomplicated task. 

Unfortunately, the security issue is only one of many problems the illegal quarries create. Quarry activities cause severe air pollution, which has a significant impact on the health of residents – Jews and Arabs alike – living in the quarry’s proximity. Numerous residents asserted to Green Israel Forum researchers that they have cancer and lung diseases due to continuous exposure to toxic fumes of dust and asphalt found in the area. Moreover, the residents live in a constant state of worry since their houses are adjacent to the quarries and enormous pits, making the possibility of uncareful family members falling into these chasms all the more likely. 

Besides causing harm to humans, illegal quarry activities subject the natural world and wildlife to harm too. The quarries exploit nature’s ‘kindness’ in providing us with invaluable resources such as stone for construction and, instead of returning the favor, destroy animal habitats in their vicinity and leave the natural world wounded with no chance of recovery.

Presently, tyrannic Palestinians run the illegal quarry industry in Judea and Samaria, Palestinians that have become oligarchs and rulers of the area due to their relations to senior Palestinian Authority officials and the Civil Administration personnel. The local population, wounded and incapacitated, cannot object and protest the injustice that occurs daily due to their fear of the quarry owners and on account of the hush money payment they receive in return for their silence.

While working on documenting the damages and effects the illegal quarries cause, we at the ‘Green Israel Forum’ also work in various sectors to eradicate the phenomenon. We strive to bring the existing state of affairs to the attention of law enforcement agencies and try to offer possible and feasible solutions to the issue, such as: changing the legislation regarding quarried materials and changing the policy regarding the authorization process for transporting these materials from Judea and Samaria to Israel.    

For an extensive study about the illegal quarries: