The article unfortunately fails to mention that even the official site to dump the toxic waste, Ramat Hovav, is located in the Naqab/Negev, and more importantly near Bedouin villages, who inhabitants have been plagued with health problems. -rg
WEST BANK FACES TOXIC WASTE CRISIS
by Mel Frykberg in Ramallah
Al Jazeera
March 27, 2008
The West Bank has become a dumping site for hazardous waste - which
is making residents sick, say Israeli and Palestinian environmental
groups.
Several weeks ago, villagers from Jima'in in the Nablus district
complained that Israeli trucks were again dumping waste on Palestinian
land.
Ayman Abu Thaher, the deputy director-general of the Palestinian
Authority's Environmental Awareness Directorate said such dumping
has been going on for years.
"The Israelis are using the West Bank as a cheap and easy alternative
for dumping their waste at the expense of the health of Palestinians,"
he said.
According to Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Israeli,
Palestinian and Jordanian environmental group, improper dumping of
contaminants and waste has over time become a threat to the region's
drinking water.
Toxic percolation
In 2006, FoEME published a report, "A Seeping Time Bomb, Pollution
of the Mountain Aquifer by Solid Waste," which found that the
unsustainable disposal of solid waste has resulted in the percolation
of toxic substances including chloride, arsenic and heavy metals such
as cadmium, mercury and lead into the groundwater.Since the 2006
report was released, the German government has built a new solid
waste disposal project near Ramallah and the World Bank and the EU
have also completed another solid waste landfill facility near Jenin.
But Mira Epstein, a spokeswoman for FoEME, said that despite the
improvements, the threat to drinking water and the environment
persist today.
Over three million people reside in the recharge area of the aquifer,
which falls under both the West Bank and parts of Israel. The
population includes 2.3 million Palestinians, 235,000 Israeli settlers
and 500,000 Israelis living within Israel's internationally recognized
borders.
Bassem Abu Mahdi, the director of primary health services in Salfit,
which is located near a dump site in the northern West Bank, said an
"increasing number of people have been diagnosed with cancer, amoebic
dysentery, diarrhea and other related diseases".
He cited the dumping of hazardous waste as a cause of the increase.
Accusing Israel
Abu Thaher, told Al Jazeera that some Israeli companies were dumping
waste in the Palestinian territories rather than resorting to the
official hazardous waste treatment site, Ramot Havav, in southern
Israel.
In 1985, Israeli pesticide company Geshuri closed operations in Kfar
Sava and relocated to Tulkarem in the northern West Bank after Israeli
residents petitioned for and obtained a court order for the company
to move.
They had accused the company of being responsible for an increase in
pollution-related health issues.
"A number of Israeli companies have relocated to the West Bank to
avoid the strict environmental laws governing the disposal of waste,
particularly hazardous waste in Israel," Abu Thaher told Al Jazeera.
Palestinians burning garbage
But Tzali Greenberg, a spokesman for Israel's Environment Ministry,
told Al Jazeera that the country's strict environmental laws are
also enforced on Israeli companies operating in the Palestinian
territories."There is no difference to us between Israeli and
Palestinian waste," Greenberg said.
"It all gets treated the same and we follow perpetrators who break
the law equally and we think people who are serious about this should
contact us with the necessary evidence."
"We will be happy to follow up and take legal action."
Zecharya Tagar, from the Israeli division of FoEME, said most of the
waste produced in the West Bank came from Palestinians, who comprise
the majority of the population in the area.
He added that the biggest threat to both the environment and health
in the region was the continual burning of waste by Palestinians.
"This is causing the air to be filled with carcinogenic particles
which Palestinians are breathing in on a daily basis," Tagar said.
"Furthermore, Israel does not have a policy of dumping in the West
Bank and to the best of our knowledge, this is complied with by the
public sector."
Security trumps
But the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), a NGO dedicated
to promoting sustainable development in the occupied Palestinian
territories, says waste from illegal Israeli settlements is the
major problem.
"Wastewater from the settlements is not restricted to domestic effluent
but includes pesticides, asbestos, batteries, cement and aluminum which
contain carcinogenic and hazardous compounds," ARIJ recently reported.
It also accused Israeli authorities of being lenient on settlers who
broke the law.
The faltering peace process has also contributed to the problem. The
joint Israeli-Palestinian Environmental Experts Committee, established
under the Oslo Accords, has not met since 1999, forcing coordination
on the issue of solid waste to be done in an ad hoc manner.
The dumping of untreated medical waste, including used syringes
randomly discarded in garbage dumps, continues largely because of
restrictions on movement that the Israeli army argues is necessary
for security reasons.
The extensive closures and roadblocks have also made it hard for
wastewater tankers to reach the many Palestinian communities that are
not connected to main sewage systems and are dependent on cesspits
and these tankers for disposal of waste.
