New Quarrel in Israel-Occupied West Bank: Where to Dump the Trash
By Omar Abdel-Baqui, April 23, 2023, WSJ
ATARA, West Bank—Thaer Atary and his family live just steps away from an overflowing makeshift dumpsite that sends noxious fumes drifting into their home in this mountaintop Palestinian village.

“A dump should never be this close to residents,” said Mr. Atary, worrying for the health of his children as the stench of rotting trash wafts through the air.

The Israel-occupied West Bank has more than 70 unofficial dumpsites, many of them in densely-populated Palestinian cities and villages under the control of the semiautonomous Palestinian Authority. About 10% of residential trash in areas under authority
management is dumped in such sites or simply burned, according to researchers overseen by the United Nations.

The reasons are many. Israel restricts construction on land it controls, while suitably unpopulated areas under authority jurisdiction are scarce. Disputes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers over rights to official landfills have held back efforts
to build or expand them.

The mounting piles of garbage are a stark reminder of how fights over land—both large and small—continue to play out in the region as both Palestinians and Israelis press their claims to the territory.

They also show how the stalled peace process has left Palestinians with little scope to deal with the problem.

Though Israel wrested control of the West Bank after the 1967 war with Jordan, it didn’t formally annex the region, which would mean taking responsibility for the welfare of Palestinians who live there.

Instead, the Palestinian Authority administers about 40% of the area, but can’t freely use space beyond the borders set in the 1995 Oslo Accords peace agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, despite the population growing by over 1 million
to three million people in the intervening years.

The authority is now struggling to safely dispose of growing amounts of trash, limited in part by a $770 million budget deficit for 2022, according to World Bank estimates, and adding to a growing list of troubles. Public schools have closed since
February due to teacher strikes affecting hundreds of thousands students; public employees haven’t received full salaries in over a year; and new armed groups have flourished, further eroding the authority’s legitimacy. Polls regularly show most
Palestinians are increasingly frustrated with the authority, which they believe is corrupt and ineffective.

The Palestinian Authority didn’t respond to requests for comment about its public approval ratings and its budget issues.

Many municipalities under Palestinian control rely on unofficial dumpsites because, officials say, they feel there is no other choice. Environmental groups say these unofficial dumpsites don’t follow the same safety precautions as official landfills.
Roadways in the Palestinian territory are full of litter and residents often burn trash near their homes, creating toxic fumes. With one of just three main sanitary landfills in the West Bank operated by Palestinians nearing capacity, officials and
environmental groups are warning that the area is on the cusp of an impending environmental crisis.

“The status quo is not sustainable,” said Nidal Atallah, a spokesman at the Heinrich Boll Foundation, a German nongovernmental organization. “Waste management is often overlooked because of the political situation, but it’s part of the political
situation. It’s something that affects lives, land, air, water and the region’s future.”

For some Palestinians, trying to dispose of trash safely can be a dangerous undertaking.

Bahjat Jabarin, the mayor of Ad-Dhahiriya, a West Bank Palestinian town that straddles territory controlled by the authority and Israel, late last year directed the municipality he governs to build an unpermitted waste transfer site to cope with the town�
��s growing trash problem. Mr. Jarabin said the site had to cross over into territory controlled by Israel for it to be safely away from residents.

In January, Israeli soldiers detained Mr. Jabarin for several hours—at gunpoint, he said—when he refused to hand over keys to the site’s machinery.

A month after his detention, mounds of rotting trash and animal carcasses could be seen at the site. He said the Israeli military barred the municipality from conducting work at the station, including removing the waste that was already there. The
military also seized two municipal-owned bulldozers and a garbage truck that were returned weeks later, after the city paid a fine of a few thousand dollars for building the illegal site, Mr. Jabarin said.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the incident. The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories—the agency in the Israeli Defense Ministry responsible for overseeing parts of the West Bank and liaising with the authority—said
requests for permits often don’t adhere to Israel’s planning laws, which are stricter than global standards. The agency, known as Cogat, seldom grants Palestinian construction permit requests, according to the U.N.

“Cogat representatives are helping to advance the planning processes for infrastructure projects that will deal with issues of environmental quality, including waste,” Cogat said.

In other cases, Palestinians have run into conflict with Israeli settlers. A $15 million landfill project initially funded by the German government in 2004 has been stalled due to legal and administrative delays, including a court case brought by nearby
Israeli settlers who are demanding the site also serve Jewish residents and not be exclusively for Palestinians.

“We refuse this demand on a matter of principle,” said Majdi Al Saleh, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of local government, adding that the authority doesn’t recognize Israeli settlements as legitimate.

Cogat said that the Israeli Supreme Court rejected objections to the planning process. The agency said it is awaiting an application for construction and that the site is intended for Palestinian use only.

Israel Ganz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council, which administers dozens of West Bank settlements, said the authority’s unwillingness to work with neighboring Israeli settlements is aggravating environmental problems that could otherwise be solved
and forcing waste to be taken further for disposal.

Naomi Kahn, a spokeswoman for the Israeli settler activist organization Regavim, said Israel won’t take a more active role in combating the trash problem because it is reluctant to assert its control over the territory.

“The state of Israel has been afraid to do anything that would speak to some sort of sovereignty or control of the area and would be construed as an act of annexation,” she said.

Ahmad Sokar, who oversees the Al-Minya landfill, one of few official Palestinian-run sites, said the landfill operator was forced by the Israeli military to accept trash from settlements, which it doesn’t have the capacity to handle.

About 1,300 tons of waste enters the Al-Minya landfill daily, with about 140 tons coming from Israeli settlements, Mr. Sokar said.

Mr. Sokar said the Israeli government provided Palestinians with slim pickings on where it would approve the Al-Minya landfill location. “We’d prefer to be at least one to two kilometers away from residents,” Mr. Sokar said.

Iyyad Abdul-Raheem lives about 200 yards from the Al-Minya landfill in a home he built around 20 years ago. The Palestinian shepherd, 47, said the landfill has shattered his livelihood and poisoned his environment.

Mr. Abdul-Raheem said his sheep once grazed where the landfill now sits.

“Many of my sheep became sick and died, likely from eating plastic or drinking toxic water from around the landfill,” he said. “We’re good people trying to live a good life, but there are so many people and factors preventing us from living
comfortably.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-quarrel-in-israel-occupied-west-bank-where-to-dump-the-trash-1752f1f9

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