The High Court of Justice will hear a petition on Wednesday demanding Israel be ordered to allow a Gazan processed foods manufacturer to sell its goods in the West Bank.
The petition by the company, Sarayo al Wadiyeh, and the Gisha nonprofit association was filed in July 2018 and also demands that other Gazan processed food manufacturers be allowed to sell their products in the West Bank.
Advocate Mona Hadad of Gisha, who wrote the motion, claims that Israel’s statements about the need to rehabilitate the Gazan economy are contradicted by the absence of clear procedures to let goods through the crossing points, which are controlled by Israel.
Sarayo al Wadiyeh was founded in 1985 and makes wafer cookies, potato chips and biscuits. It began marketing in Israel and the West Bank in 1988, where it sold up to 80 percent of its products.
In the past, the plant employed 200 people in Gaza and 20 in the West Bank, the motion claims. But in 2007, Israel clapped constraints on imports of raw materials to Gaza, and exports from the Strip, and Sarayo al Wadiyeh stopped exports. The constraints were eased in 2010 and Israel now does allow some Gazan export of fresh produce, textiles and furniture - but not processed food.
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About a third of the Gazan products sold to the West Bank before 2007 was processed food.
Because of the ban on selling its products in Israel and the West Bank, Sarayo al Wadiyeh is only operating now at 30 percent of its capacity, and scaled back its staff accordingly. The owners of the company, Walid and Wael al Wadiyeh, say they know there is demand for their goods in the West Bank.
Last year, the company owners asked the Coordination and Liaison Office for clarification of procedures to sell goods from Gaza in the West Bank.
The coordinator conveyed that the marketing of non-agricultural goods in the West Bank is the responsibility of a Palestinian administrator, and also stated that it was working with the company and Palestinian elements to resolve the issue. But nobody on the Israeli side has been in touch with them since, say the company owners.
No answer was given to a second request for instructions, nor did the Palestinian administrator answer. In any case, though, since the body responsible for approving the movement of goods is the Coordination and Liaison Office, there’s no point in pursuing Palestinian permission when Israeli permission hasn’t materialized, the petitioners say.
The state told the court that the Palestinian Coordination and Liaison committee did not give the Israeli committee a request from the Sarayo al Wadiyeh plant to sell in the West Bank.
Jonathan Nadav, a senior deputy in the state prosecution’s high court division, wrote that there is no ban on sending food products from Gaza to the West Bank or anywhere else. But the state hasn’t set up a supervisory mechanism that would enable it to be sent from Gaza, and the Health Ministry is concerned that they would “leak” into Israel. So at this stage, Nadav wrote, there might be difficulty in selling these Gazan goods in the West Bank.
Gisha intends to argue that the state is making conflicting statements: The Coordination and Liaison Office says it’s working with the company owners and Palestinian authorities to arrange the export, but also, they claim to have never received a request. Hence the demand that Israel issue clear procedures to enable Palestinians to submit formal requests, Gisha says.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-stopped-gazan-factory-from-selling-in-west-bank-top-court-hears-petition-1.7243551
2019-05-15 09:09:12Z
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