RAMALLAH, January 13, 2015 (WAFA) – Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority (EQA) said, in a statement Tuesday, that following the Palestinian Authority’s recent move of signing on to four international conventions on environment, Israel will be held accountable for committing crimes against the environment in Palestine.

Ahead of the United Nations Security Council’s failure to adopt a draft resolution on ending the Israeli occupation, President Mahmoud Abbas recently signed letters of accession to 16 international treaties, including the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

EQA said that Israel will therefore be held accountable for dumping hazardous wastes in Palestinian land, and for deliberately devastating the Palestinian biodiversity and natural resources.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the EQA said Palestine would act to restore its sovereignty over the water rights in the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.

On January 1, President Mahmoud Abbas signed instruments of accession to 16 international treaties, shortly after the UNSC failed to approve a draft resolution on ending the Israeli occupation of the OPT by 2017.

A report by the Friends of the Earth International published a report in 2013 on the ongoing colonization and ethnic cleansing that Palestine is subjected to, including the control over land and water resources.

It highlighted the separation wall, which is allegedly designed to segregate the West Bank from Israel and has largely been built on Palestinian land along the Western aquifer, which is the richest strategic groundwater basin.

It also reported on Israeli’s use of waste water to contaminate water resources and agricultural land as a form of political pressure.

The signing on global treaties on environment will enable Palestine to sue Israel for its practices which endanger the environment and Palestinian’s safety.

M.N/M.H

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