Sde Brir

The story

Sde Brir is an area in the Arad valley, about three kilometers and seven hundred meters west of Arad and about three and a half kilometers from Kuseife. In its territory is the Bedouin locality of al-Fur'a, in which there are thousands of residents, and unrecognized villages. The phosphate deposit here was discovered as early as 1957, in a geological survey of the Geophysical Institute of Israel. It is the southeastern part of a wider field that extends along the Arad valley, and contains about seventy million tons of phosphorite. In that period a mine was already working at Oron, and afterwards mining sites were set up at Zin and at Mishor Rotem, and therefore nothing was mined here. In 2004 the ICL Rotem company submitted a request to set up an open mine here, because the phosphate reserves at its other sites are about to run out. The local committee in Arad rejected the request in 2005, and the mayor at the time, Moti Brill, announced that he would act against the plan. The Ministry of Health and environmental organizations joined the opposition, with the claim that the mine would raise the mortality rates in Arad and in the two neighboring Bedouin localities, al-Fur'a and Kuseife. The employees of the company, for their part, demonstrated in 2013 in favor of the approval of the plan. In 2009 the plan was approved in the district committee, and two hundred and seventy-six residents of Arad, of Kuseife and of al-Fur'a petitioned the High Court of Justice. In December 2015 the National Council approved a plan that permits mining at Sde Brir and at Zohar Darom, and in March 2018 the government approved it, despite the opposition of the Ministry of Health.

• Industry
• Bedouin
• Arad