RAMALLAH, Thursday, January 16, 2020 (WAFA) -The Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority today condemned the declaration by Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett regarding recognizing seven new sites in the occupied West Bank as nature reserves, and said this declaration is nothing more than a step toward enhancing settlement construction.

“The decision comes in the context of a number of measures and methods by which Israel defrauds international law and the institutions of the international community by using the pretext of nature reserves as a feeble and meager argument to justify its theft and control over the Palestinian territories for the benefit of settlements and to serve the settlers,” it said in a press release.

It said this violates the provisions of international humanitarian law that prevents the occupying power from establishing any civilian facility intended to serve the citizens of the occupying power in the territory of the state under occupation.

The Environmental Quality Authority stressed that “this declaration is just another crime to be added to a series of environmental crimes committed by the occupation authorities in the occupied Palestinian territories and that as a whole constitute an environmental war crime in the sense stipulated in paragraph 4 of item 2 of Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

It said the declaration is clearly racist when it deprives the Palestinian citizen access to his land while turning it for the benefit of strangers, which is a crime that falls within the crimes against humanity stipulated in Article 7 of the Basic Law of the International Criminal Court. Accordingly, the Environmental Quality Authority will use all the means provided by international law and international institutions, including going to the International Criminal Court and the UN General Assembly and Security Council to address Israeli environmental crimes in the occupied territories, including the decisions to confiscate land under the pretext of the establishment of nature reserves.

It also called on the United Nations to assume its responsibilities to provide protection for the environment and natural resources of peoples under oppression, control and occupation and apply that to the Palestinian environment.

M.K.