Te Palestinian company ASSIA Consulting Engineers has sent a letter to the Stop the Wall Campaign announcing their withdrawal from all of the projects with the Israeli civil administration in Bet Eil. The company further assures their commitment to work together against the expulsion of the Bedouin communities of the West Bank. This is a major step to unify the Palestinian efforts on the ground and to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land.
See a translation of the full text of the letter below.
ASSIA Consulting Engineers
9/10/2014
Dear Members and Representatives of the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
Subject: The project for the master plans and infrastructure in area ”C”
Our company entered a bidding competition for master plans for some of the villages and Arab communities in Area C, and for infrastructure projects. Our group, three companies consisting of Assia, Atlas and Orbit, won the bidding because we offered the lowest price. We started the project 3 years ago, and we tried our best to meet Palestinians’ interest of remaining rooted on their land. The project consist of 33 small projects, none of them have reached their final stage, and we completed between 20-70% of the required work for these projects, and most of them have been frozen or stopped due to the settlers’ objections to them.
We understood after the activists came to our company on September 21st, 2014, that some of these projects might be linked to the expulsion of the Bedouins from their lands, in particular Al Nuwameh village plan. We were never aware of this before, and based on this knowledge we presented a letter of resignation withdrawing from all of the projects to the civil administration in Bet Eil. In this letter we held them responsible for not disclosing this information beforehand. Even if this information is not confirmed officially, it is enough for us to take such a stance. We also informed the Engineers Union of our position in a letter dated September 22nd, 2014.
We in Assia Company highly appreciate the efforts of the popular committees in resisting the expulsion of the Bedouins; we will join these efforts and are ready to provide any needed technical or legal assistance, whenever it is required from us.
General Director
Engineer Adeeb Abdullah