Amnesty asks Irish company to explain its policy on wall

ISRAEL: The human rights group, Amnesty International, has called on the Irish company, Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH), to state its position on Israel's construction of a giant wall along the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

CRH owns 25 per cent of the Mashav group in Israel, as well as a call option to acquire an additional 25 per cent of the company.

Mashav is the holding company for Nesher Cement, which has a monopoly on cement production in Israel.

Amnesty believes there is a strong probability that Nesher is supplying construction materials to 25 Israeli companies who are building the wall. In a report issued today, Amnesty concludes that "the construction by Israel of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories violates international law and is contributing to grave human rights violations."

Drury Communications, which handles sensitive issues for CRH, issued a short statement acknowledging that CRH "has a minority stake" in Mashav Cement "which supplies cement, a commodity raw material product widely available in the region . . . to Israeli and Palestinian concrete product manufacturers. . .".

A spokesman admitted that Nesher is the sole Israeli producer of cement; the other sources alluded to in Drury's statement are Egyptian, Turkish and Jordanian.

The statement also noted that Nesher "is not involved in the manufacture of concrete or concrete products. . . and has no involvement with this project". Cement is only one of the ingredients in concrete, the spokesman explained.

He would not guarantee that Nesher was not selling cement to construction companies building the 650 km long wall.

CRH's website boasts that it is one of the world's top four building materials groups and one of Ireland's largest industrial companies, with over 1,200 locations in 18 countries employing more than 40,000 people. Its market capitalisation is €8.935 billion.

Amnesty sent a letter to CRH on February 13th seeking an explanation of the Irish company's position. "Cement Roadstone Holdings must explain whether it is involved in the building of this fence/wall through its subsidiaries Mashav and Nesher," said Dr Kathleen Cavanaugh, who teaches international law at NUI Galway and is a member of the board of Amnesty's Irish section.

If CRH is providing material for the construction of the wall, it is contravening the 2003 UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights.

"Because they are a company within the Republic of Ireland, and because Ireland would not contravene UN Norms, there's an assumption that they wouldn't want to participate in any activity in contravention of international legal norms," Dr Cavanaugh said.

As requested by a UN General Assembly resolution on December 8th 2003, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will begin hearings on the legal implications of the wall on February 23rd.

Israel claims that the ICJ does not have jurisdiction over its actions in the Occupied Territories. It describes the wall as "a defensive measure, designed to block the passage of terrorists, weapons and explosives into the State of Israel".

If that is the case, Amnesty argues, Israel could build the wall legally inside Israel, or on the 1949 Armistice Line between Israel and the West Bank, known as the Green Line.

Instead, 90 per cent of the land confiscated for the building of the wall is Palestinian, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordinator of Humanitarian Affairs.

"When completed, the fence/wall will cut off more than 15 per cent of the West Bank land from the rest of the West Bank and some 270,000 Palestinians living in these areas will be trapped in closed military areas," Amnesty says.