July / August 2001
Cogema on trial for Illegal
Radioactive Waste Storage
by Annie Makhijani and Didier Anger
France’s commercial reprocessing plant
at La Hague, operated by the company Cogema, separates by far the largest
quantity of plutonium in the world today. The
plutonium comes from commercial spent fuel generated in French reactors as well
as in the reactors of the processing company’s foreign clients, the largest of
which are Germany and Japan. The
government of France owns a majority share of Cogema. { Cogema is 77% owned by the French government , with almost
all the rest being owned by the oil conglomerate Total / FINA / Elf }
In the late 1980s, as large scale
reprocessing was becoming commercially established, the French government began
looking for a repository site for its high-level commercial radioactive waste.
As has been the experience elsewhere, there was intense protest when the
preliminary list of sites selected for study was announced.
The process had to be shut down and France started over with a new
nuclear waste law, passed in 1991. We
will refer to the law as the Bataille Act, in reference to the parliamentarian
who authored it, Christian Bataille, a member of the ruling Socialist Party.
The Bataille Act requires simultaneous
research on three methods of high-level radioactive waste management (storage,
transmutation, and repository disposal). Article
3 of the law requires the return of foreign radioactive wastes to their country
of origin after the reprocessing of their spent fuel has been completed.
Another crucial feature of the law is that it forbids the storage of
foreign nuclear wastes on French soil beyond the limited time necessary for the
reprocessing requirements. {The law
does not specify the duration of this certain period of time, referred to as
“technical delays imposed by the reprocessing”.
However, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, Christian
Bataille said that it is understood that the wastes could be kept between five
and ten years. } Implicit in this
idea was that Cogema
(a)
would not accept foreign spent fuel for storage in France is it was not
intended for reprocessing,
(b)
would not store spent fuel for long periods of time before reprocessing,
and
(c)
would store the reprocessed wastes from the spent fuel for long periods
of time.
Most of the radioactivity is the
reprocessing waste is contained in liquid high level wastes, which are verified
and stored in specially constructed structures at the La Hague site, located
near Cherbourg in the northwest of France.
Low and intermediate level radioactive wastes generated by reprocessing
are due to be compacted and stored in containers at La Hague.
While Cogema has returned some vitrified waste generated from the
reprocessing of foreign spent fuel to Germany and Japan, the majority remains
and continues to pile up at La Hague. None
of the low and intermediate level waste has been returned, and Cogema and its
clients are not resolved on its final destination.
Liquid low level wastes are discharged into the English Channel.
Illegal Shipments?
Cogema has accepted:
·
close to 50 metric tonnes of German MOX spent
fuel, i.e. spent fuel resulting from the irradiation of mixed plutonium dioxide
– uranium dioxide fuel in German reactors, between 1988 and 1998.
Cogema does not have a permit to reprocess this spent fuel and has not
applied for one. Such a permit is
necessary since MOX spent fuel contains far more plutonium and other
trans-uranic radionuclides than spent uranium fuel.
It is being stored in violation of the spirit 1991 law, as Bataille, the
author of the law, has noted: “The
[1991] law allows storage of wastes after reprocessing only for the time needed
to cool the wastes. It did not
foresee storage of unreprocessed spent fuel for an extended period, awaiting
reprocessing. This practice is
contrary to the spirit of the law. Storage
of wastes not intended for commercial reprocessing is not allowed.”
·
four shipments to La Hague during the summer of
2000 of German non-irradiated MOX fuel scrap from the Hanau MOX fuel fabrication
plant which is being dismantled. This
fuel is slated to be reprocessed. However,
Cogema would need a special authorization from the DSIN (Direction de la Surete
des Installations Nucleaires, equivalent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in
the United States) to reprocess it and has not applied for one.
Furthermore, these shipments have occurred without the knowledge of the
French Ministry of Environment and is in spite of the fact that for the last two
years the French government has declared that no more imports of spent fuel from
Germany would be accepted until Germany takes back its wastes from La Hague. The Ministry of Industry claims that the shipments were legal
since the fuel is not irradiated and the contract was signed in 1997, before the
1998 ban on transports from Germany to France. Eleven more shipments from Hanau are scheduled for this year.
·
three hundred and sixty rods of irradiated MTR
(Material Testing Reactor) fuel from the Australian Lucas Heights research
reactor. This fuel, which arrived
in March in the port of Cherbourg, is also slated to be reprocessed but, again,
Cogema would need a special authorization from the DSIN.
The CRILAN / Anger case against Cogema
A lawsuit filed in 1994 by a
non-governmental organization in Normandy, the Committee for Reflection,
Information, and Anti-Nuclear Struggle (Comite de Reflexion, D’Information, et
de Lutte Anti-Nucleaire or CRILAN, for short), alleges that Cogema is violating
the Bataille Act. The complaint was
amended in 1997 to include a charge of endangerment of public safety, since a
law passed in that year allowed individuals to file suite if they believed their
safety was being endangered due to illegal activities.
Didier Anger (pronounced aahnzhay), who represents CRILAN on the
Commission Hague and the Commission Flamanville {the commissions are the
equivalent of US stakeholders’ committees} and was also a former
parliamentarian to the European Union, is the plaintiff for this new charge.
The activities alleged to cause public endangerment are the (illegal)
storage of foreign nuclear waste at La Hague and the releases to the environment
resulting from reprocessing.
Article 3 of the 1991 waste law is very
specific in requiring the return of foreign wastes. CRILAN’s position is that the law required the return of
all wastes that were generated at La Hague as a result of reprocessing foreign
spent fuel. Besides vitrified high
level wastes, Cogema must also return other reprocessing wastes.
Before the lawsuit was filed in 1994,
Cogema appeared to have no plans to return the foreign waste to the countries
where the spent fuel originated, including Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Belgium
and the Netherlands, and these countries had no plans to take back their wastes.
In fact, a review of the older contracts indicates that Cogema’s
foreign customers hoped that they could abandon their wastes in France under
cover of sending spent fuel there for reprocessing
Based on the testimony of Monsieur
Bataille, reprocessing a batch of spent fuel takes five to eight years
(including the time for high level waste vitrification).
Reprocessing operations on the batches of spent fuel that resulted in the
large amount of vitrified high level waste that is currently stored at La Hague
have long been completed One of the
central arguments of CRILAN’s lawsuit is that this waste is being stored at La
Hague in violation of French law.
CRILAN’s goals in filing the lawsuit
are:
1.
To have it officially confirmed that Cogema’s La Hague has become the
nuclear dump for Europe and Japan.
2.
To demonstrate that Cogema has used illegal tactics to obtain contracts.
3.
To have highlighted the fact that the government has allowed Cogema to
transgress the law, notably by not specifying that penalties would be incurred
in case of infraction, and thus not fully implementing the Bataille Act.
{ The French legal system requires an enforcement decree from the
concerned ministries – the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Health, and
the Ministry of Environment – specifying the modes of implementation of the
law and, in the case of criminal provisions, the penalties for infraction of the
law. While the Ministry of Industry
has issued implementing and enforcement orders, setting in motion the research
provisions of the 1991 waste law, enforcement provisions and specified penalties
for violation of the waste storage provision have not been issued. }
4.
To promote the return of foreign waste to the country of origin and
thereby to help stem or stop reprocessing.
5.
To make the French and German governments accountable and to force them
to resolve the difficulties confronting the repatriation of the waste.
Not only Cogema but also the governmental agencies are responsible for
the failure of the lawful return of the waste to Germany.
Besides the environmental and legal
aspects of this case, the matter should be of considerable interest to all other
countries concerned with the management of nuclear materials and nuclear waste.
If Cogema, the world’s top plutonium handling and processing company,
is found to be routinely in violation of the laws of France, should it raise the
question of whether much of the world’s commercial separated plutonium is in
the “wrong hands”?
Progress to date
Before CRILAN’s 1994 lawsuit, wastes
from foreign spent fuel reprocessing were not returned to their countries of
origin. Since then, there have been
six shipments to Japan, two to Belgium, and three to Germany.
However, Germany does not have enough storage space at its power plants
for the vitrified logs of radioactive waste.
Further, shipments of vitrified logs to the Gorleben repository in
Germany have encountered stiff opposition from anti-nuclear activists.
The widespread publicity attracted by
the CRILAN lawsuit played a role in the suspension of spent fuel shipments from
Germany to France in May 1998, pending a resolution of resuming repatriation of
German vitrified high level wstes now stored in France.
An agreement between the French and German governments was reached in
January 2001 to resume the shipments in both directions.
A shipment from La Hague to Gorleben took place in March 2001.
It caused enormous protest in Germany, with thousands of activists
blocking the transport route, which was escorted by thousands of police.
{ This one shipment included waste generated from the reprocessing of
approximately 250 metric tonnes of
German spent fuel. } In the other
direction, 1000 metric tonnes of spent fuel are due to arrive at La Hague
between now and 2005 for reprocessing. Repatriation
is a central issue in the lawsuit
In January 1999, the judge Frederic
Chevallier, who has investigative powers under French law, decided that there
was enough merit in Didier Anger’s charge to put Cogema under investigation.
In May of that year, the judge visited Cogema’s La Hague site and Anger
accompanied him. Since cogema did
not meet the judge’s demand for documents, Judge Chevallier carried out a
search of Cogema’s headquarters in Velizy in September 1999 to obtain these
documents in person.
Cogema petitioned the court to dismiss
the CRILAN case after an official report by the IPSN (Institut de protection et
de surveillance nucleaire, an institute under both the Ministry of Industry and
Ministry of Environment) claimed – contrary to the findings of a paper
published in a British medical journal that cases of leukaemia near the La Hague
site were likely not attributable to reprocessing activities.
In October 2000, the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected Cogema’s appeal.
In October 2000, the Cherbourg judge
granted CRILAN’s lawyer, Maitre Tilbault de Montbrial, and Didier Anger access
to the documents that were confiscated during the judge’s search at Cogema
headquarters, in partiular the German reprocessing contracts that had been
translated. There were several
types of contracts. The oldest,
made with France’s Commissariat a l’energie atomique, covering at least 1700
metric tonnes, has no explicit return clause.
Others have a return and a no return option. Some provide for return but with no date attached.
Judge Chevallier has named an expert to
provide him with a report on the case. The
expert is expected to file his report to the court around June 2001.
There will be a judicial hearing after that, in which plaintiffs and
defendants will participate, and upon which the judge will make his findings.
Cogema may appeal the findings of the judge. The process of judicial hearing appeals, and concurrent
organizing and media work by CRILAN is expected to extend into the year 2002.
Other Legal Actions
Greenpeace France took Cogema to court
for shipping irradiated nuclear fuel from Australia. On March 15, 2001, the court ruled in favor of Greenpeace,
forbidding Cogema to unload the fuel. To
make its judgment stick, the court imposed a fine of 100,000 francs (about
$15,000) per rod unloaded, to be renewed every week until the fuel is either
shipped back or the authorization to reprocess obtained.
The court also ordered Cogema to pay 20,000 francs to Greenpeace for
lawyers’ fees, but Cogema got the fee overturned on appeal.
The case is still underway.
In March 2001, CRILAN took Cogema to
court for accepting German non-irradiated MOX fuel scraps. Although the arguments were the same as those put forward by
Greenpeace, the case was not judged on the validity of the arguments.
It was dismissed on the grounds that CRILAN did not have the standing to
bring forth such a case, CRILAN has referred the case to the environmental group
Manche-Nature, which appears to have the standing to file the complaint.
Sharon’s well documented record of war
crimes goes back to the 50s. As the
commander of Unit 101, a unit whose specific purpose was to instil terror by
murder and violence, he and his force systematically slaughtered 69 inhabitants
of the village of Qiba in October 1953. Qiba
was a Palestinian village on the West Bank which, at the time, was annexed to
Jordan. Two thirds of those killed
were women and children. People
were slaughtered in their homes and prevented from running away by shooters
standing outside the houses. The
houses were then blown up. The
village, with its school and reservoir, was reduced to rubble.
Unused explosives with Israeli army markings in Hebrew were found at the
scene. As Sharon’s unit withdrew
Israeli troops, in Israel, shelled the surrounding villages to cover the
withdrawal.
Prior to this, in August 1953, Sharon
and his unit massacred 50 refugees in the refugee camp of El-Bureig in the south
of Gaza. The UN commander reported
that “bombs were thrown through the windows of huts in which the refugees were
sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic
weapons”.
Sharon was head of Israeli Defence
Forces southern command after the 1967 war.
His task was to “pacify” the Gaza Strip. Many of whose inhabitants were refugees from the 1948 war.
Sharon’s way of “pacifying” the inhabitants was to bulldoze
hundreds of homes to make wide straight roads through the camps.
The camps were shanty-towns of
two-roomed houses built for the refugees with UN aid.
One such, Gaza City’s beach Camp, where the refugees are still waiting
for a decision on their future, soldiers with guns drove people into the streets
before the bulldozers destroyed their homes.
The camps were laced with a network of
wide security roads to allow Israeli troops in heavy armoured vehicles to move
easily through. This gave them
control of the camps and allowed them to hunt down men from the Palestinian
Liberation Army.
The refugees had to find shelter
wherever they could. Many families
were loaded onto trucks and taken to a town in the middle of the Sinai Desert
then under Israel’s control. Those
seen as political activists, and their families, were exiled to Sinai.
Sharon’s devastation was not confined
to the camps. In August 1971 troops
under his command destroyed some 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, displacing
16,000 people. Hundreds of young
Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon. Relatives of suspected guerrillas, 600 in all, were exiled to
Sinai while 104 guerrillas were assassinated.
Raji Sourani director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza
city said “the policy at that time was not to arrest suspects, but to
assassinate them”. Thirty years
on nothing has changed.
As defence minister, in 1981, Sharon
assisted and advised the South African forces fighting in support of Jonas
Savimbi against the legitimate government of Angola. Savimbi was armed and financed by the CIA.
He and his UNITA forces were responsible for the murder and maiming of
thousands of Angolans. Israel continued to support Savimbi after the South Africans
and Americans withdrew support. Until
recently Israel was still looting the diamond mines in northern Angola where
Savimbi had his base.
Sharon, in 1981, visited Israel’s good
friend President Mobuto of Zaire. As
a result of this Israel used its influence to have the US increase aid to Zaire
In return Mobuto established diplomatic relations with Israel.
As defence minister in menacham
Begin’s second government Sharon was the commander, and architect, of the full
scale assault on Lebanon in 1982. This
was designed to destroy the PLO to force Palestinians into Jordan and to make
Lebanon an Israeli client state. This
war plan caused immense suffering and cost 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese
lives. The Israelis bombed the
civilian population mercilessly. During
this time Sharon oversaw, and was responsible for, the massacres at Sabra and
Shatilla.
Sabra and Shatilla were two camps for
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Three
thousand people were slaughtered, over a period of three days by Israel’s
proxy army, the Phalange militia. The
victims included infants, children, women, pregnant women and the elderly.
Many were mutilated or disembowelled before or after they were killed.
All this was done under the watchful eye of Sharon.
In February 1983 Israel’s Supreme
Court, chaired by its president, Yatzhak Kahan, investigated the massacre.
Despite attempts to cover up what happened by Israeli military personnel,
the Kahan Commission found Ariel Sharon, and other Israelis, responsible for the
massacre. The findings of the court
were released without Appendix B which remains secret to this day.
Sharon has always opposed any peace
agreement with the Palestinians. He
voted against a peace treaty with Egypt, he voted against withdrawal from the
so-called security zone in south Lebanon, he voted against the Oslo agreement
and he abstained on the Knesset vote on a peace treaty with Jordan.
Sharon is not a “one-off”. In
fact he represents the true face of Israel.
All Israeli governments have had the same long term policy.
That policy, without embroidery, is that
Israel will oppose a Palestinian state except for a mere 42% of the West Bank
and the central portion of Gaza. Israel
will retain control of the highways and the water resources.
Settlements will remain, the IDF will have access to them, and will have
military posts on hills and rooftops which overlook them.
Jerusalem will be under Israeli sovereignty and settlement building
around the city will continue. The
Golan Heights will not be returned to Syria.
It should be remembered that Ben-Gurion approved the terrorist missions
of Unit 101. Israeli governments
without exception, have approved and supported the filching of Palestinian land
for settlement building. Labour’s Ehud Barak approved the military escort for Sharon
when he made his provocative visit to the Al-Aksa Mosque. Barak initiated the murderous military repression of the past
months. Over 50 years the initial
Israeli policy has not changed.
Sharon’s Men
Sharon has assembled a motley collection
of Likud, Labour, right wing and religious parties to make up his “government
of national unity”. It remains to
be seen how long the “unity” lasts. Sharon’s
endless refrain of “no peace talks until the “violence” ceases” is being
repeated by those around him. It is
notable that Sharon’s choice of ministers, from those around him, does nothing
to lessen his reputation for violence.
Benyamin Ben Eliezer, chosen as defence
minister, is another ex-military man. An
Iraqi Jew who moved to Israel in its early days.
Sharon probably sees him as an asset because he is fluent in Arabic and
because he is reputed to “understand the Arab mentality”.
As military governor of the West Bank, Ben Eliezer was a hard, cruel head
of a repressive occupation force. In
the 50s and early 60s he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Egyptian
prisoners of war.
Reveham Ze’evi, leader of the extreme
right wing National Union party, is the minister of tourism.
He is a fanatic who advocates expelling every Palestinian from the West
Bank and Gaza. He also wants Sharon
to bomb Egypt and says the Aswan dam should be the first target.
Then there is Shimon Peres who
couldn’t wait to become part of Sharon’s court.
So great was his desire for power he was willing to besmirch his image as
“a dove” by associating with the likes of Sharon.
In 1986 Peres was Israel’s foreign
minister. In December of that year
Israel shot dead four Palestinian students protesting the closure of their
university. The Security Council
deplored the shooting of “defenceless Palestinian students” by the occupying
power and urged Israel to abide by the 1949 Geneva Convention.
All Security Council members condemned the killing except the US which
abstained. Peres “deplored”
that the US failed to veto the resolution.
Source:
Save the Children of Iraq
“Without the Palestinians,
Palestine dies” (back to top)
My name is Rafi. I am an American Israeli and a former member of the IDF or
Israeli Defence Force. To say the
least, I am shocked about how violent our society has become, especially since
the latest Palestinian uprising.
Somehow we have convinced the world and
even ourselves that we are the victims of violence, but in truth, we are the
perpetrators. Yes, at one time, we
suffered from discrimination and hate. We
lived in ghettos and we were shamed of being Jewish.
Because of the suffering of generations of European Jews, some of us
wanted a homeland where we would no longer have to live in shame or fear acts of
hatred against us simply because we happen to be Jews.
Our very conception was wrong.
We picked a land that was already inhabited by a native people.
Through the use of terror, liquidation, and brute force, we coerced these
peaceful people to flee their homes and to either settle as refugees in that
land which we had not yet confiscated from them, or in neighbouring Arab
countries.
After the Holocaust, we were unwanted
refugees and it was due to this fact and also in order for America to gain a
foothold in the Middle East through us, that we were able to gather weapons, and
military support from Britain and America.
Even though most of us were able to return to our former European homes
after World War II, we chose to conquer and occupy the land and homes of another
people who had been living in their own country for thousands of years.
We told the world that we were the
rightful owners and we devised so many falsehoods and distorted history to such
an extent that we began to believe ourselves.
We have always stood for freedom as long as it was Jewish freedom.
We have always supported human rights as long as those rights were Jewish
human rights. We claim to have the
only democracy in the Middle East, though our democracy is for Jews only and
through subtle use of religion, we exclude all who are not Jews from our
government we claim to be by and for the people.
When the outraged Palestinians lynched
two of our undercover agents in Ramallah, we caled them criminals and savages.
But what I saw on the streets of Beit Hadassah defies all savagery.
On January 12, Shaker, a young
Palestinian man, was chased by soldiers from the IDF through the streets of
Jerusalem. Jerusalem is holy to
Jews, Christians and Muslims. It is
a city wind worn, people torn, and a place where the prophets of the three great
monotheistic faiths once walked. But
what I saw was neither holy nor righteous.
What I saw was our soldiers sadistically dragging the body of the not yet
dead young man through the streets of Jerusalem as they laughed.
The body was dragged to our own part of
the city, Beit Hadassah, where some Jewish settlers rejoiced at the blood
gushing forth from his stricken body and as he gasped his last breath, these
same settlers sang, danced, passed out candy and shouted congratulations to one
another. I was reminded of cheetahs
and hyenas that kill and drag their prey. But
these animals kill to survive; they do not kill for pleasure.
Our soldiers on the other hand, kill to maintain an apartheid system.
And unlike the cheetahs and hyenas, they rejoice and celebrate the death
of the Palestinian fallen. I fail
to see anything civilized or heroic about the way this young man was
slaughtered. Had he been a lamb, we
would have protested in indignation had he been treated in such a manner.
I wish that the savagery ended here.
But it did not. Some of the Israelis crushed our victim’s skull in, gouged
his eyes and cut off his nose.
Though the dead do not feel pain, what
was done to this poor young man defies all reason and is the most grotesque and
savage thing I have yet to hear of.
I am sorry that Shaker was butchered in
such an inhuman way. Those
responsible for the manner in which he was killed should be charged and brought
to trial. Those of us who laughed,
sang, danced and passed out candy while he still showed signs of life should
bury our heads in shame. We are
guilty of crimes against humanity and if we continue on such a path of
self-destruction, we will have no more humanity left within us.
We, the victims of a long ago Holocaust, have created the new Palestinian
Holocaust. It is high time we stop
butchering the innocents, shed our masks of feigned abuse by a weaponless
people, and take a long hard look at what we have become.
As long as we are dishonest with the
world and ourselves, we will never achieve peace.
The image of this stricken young man and
how he was dragged through the streets, kicked and jeered at while he was yet
alive, haunt me. Even worse, the
way he was mutilated after he died, even further sicken me. God help us all for what we have done and for what we are
doing.
By courtesy @ c 2001 Edna
Yagni
Facts & Figures as of 3 June 2001
(back to top)
Since the start of the Intifada on 28
September 2000, the Israelis’ army and troops have:
Killed over 530 Palestinians of whom 188
were children under 18 years of age, the youngest being 4 months old:
-- 90% of Palestinians killed were
civilians
– 31% were children under the age of 18 years
– 97% were shot dead with live ammunition
– 2.2% died of “tear” gas inhalation
– 58% were shot in the head and / or upper body
– 21% were shot in the back
– 5% were actively taking part in demonstrations / confrontations with Israeli
troops
– 45 school children were killed in the first eight weeks, most while
returning home
– 3 paramedics were shot dead while attending casualties
– 2 journalists were shot dead covering the intifada
– 15 Palestinians who were sick, wounded or women in labour died because
ambulances were denied passage to them by the Israeli army
– 32 prominent Palestinian activists were assassinated
Wounded over 23,000 Palestinians:
-- 42% of the wounded are children under
the age of 18 years
– 10% have been permanently crippled by their injuries
– 96 paramedics were shot at during their attempts to help the injured
– 44 journalists were during their attempts to cover the crisis
Arrested:
-- over 1,000 Palestinians have been
arrested bringing the political prisoner total to over 4,500 in Israeli jails.
– since the start of the second intifada until 27 April 2001, 250 children
have been arrested of whom 120 are still imprisoned and 80 of them have been
beaten and assaulted.
Infrastructure damage and losses:
Civilian sector:
-- over 4,200 homes and offices were bombed
– 34 mosques were bombed
– 12 churches were bombed
– the Samaritan’s synagogue in Nablus was bombed
– also destroyed in bombing raids were the College for the Blind, the
Agricultural College and 30 schools
– 4 hospitals were bombed, one of them, Alia Hospital, was bombed six times
and the Red Crescent Hospital has been bombed four times
-- 130 Palestinian security posts
– they have destroyed newly-constructed roads, including water pipes,
electricity and communication pylons and lines which the Palestine National
Authority has been building with international aid for the last seven years
– President Arafat’s offices both in Gaza and Ramallah were bombed
Economic sector:
-- the loss to the Palestinian economy has been well over US$5 billion (A$10
billion) which is more than 70% of the annual national income of Palestine
– 60.7% of Palestinians are now below the serious poverty line and 68.3%
living below the poverty line as at April 2001
– unemployment is 56%
-- 220 factories have had to close because of lack of raw materials
– thousands of Palestinian workers are unable to reach their workplace because
of the military siege
– closure of Gaza International Airport
– fishermen prevented from fishing
– a $2million yoghurt factory was completely destroyed
Agricultural sector:
-- over 271,000 olive and fruit trees were destroyed by the Israeli army and
settlers
– 11,000 dunums of land were leveled by army bulldozers (1 dunum = 1000 sq m)
– around 100 water wells destroyed
– farmers are prohibited from harvesting, planting or working in their fields
Health sector:
-- 129 ambulances have been hit by Israeli fire, representing 70% of the fleet
– 200 villages have had their water cut
– international sources have recorded 137 separate violations and restrictions
against the Palestinian Red Crescent and International Red Cross
– medical supplies and ambulances donated by international organisations have
been prohibited from entering the occupied territories resulting in a severe
shortage of medicines and ambulances
– 52.3% of Palestinians requiring medical services are unable to reach them
due to the siege travel restrictions
Media:
-- 4 television and radio stations have been closed
– newspapers are prohibited from entry to Gaza for distribution
Education sector:
-- 274 schools have been completely shut off because of the siege
– Palestinian universities are not operating
– 4 schools were turned into military posts by the occupation army
– 41 schools were ordered closed affecting 20,000 students
Weapons used:
Israel has been using F-16 jet fighters, American Apache helicopter gunships,
Lao missiles, tanks, snipers with high-velocity bullets fitted with silencers
and the internationally prohibited dum-dum bullets which explode into fragments
after penetrating the body, and CS gas. In
its bombing raids Israel has employed four types of explosives and fire bombs
which comprise a number of dangerous chemical components and depleted uranium as
well as bombs with nail fragments 7cm by 3cm in size
Resolutions / Reports condemning Israel
for disproportionate and excessive use of force (not a complete list)
– UN Security Council resolution 1322, 7 October 2000
-- Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (Denmark), International Federation
of Human Rights (Paris), International Committee of Jurists (Sweden) 4 to 8
October, 2000
– Giogio Giacomelli, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on
the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 11 to 15 October, 2000
– UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution, 5th Special Session, 19
October 2000
– UN General Assembly, 10th emergency session, 20 October 2000
– USA Physicians for Human Rights, 20 to 27 October 2000
– Mary Robinson, UN Human Rights Commissioner, 7 to 13 November 2000
– Also Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross
have charged Israel with excessive use of force against Palestinian civilians.
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