Israel declares national emergency over Palestinian ‘terror pollution’

Defense minister and finance minister mull ways to combat illegal garbage-burning operations in Palestinian towns, noting that air pollution constitutes a national emergency after NGO claims 1,300 to 1,400 Israelis die every year as a result of illnesses caused by the toxic fumes.

By World Israel News Staff

Israeli leaders met Thursday to discuss plans to combat illegal Palestinian waste processing sites, where trash is burned without oversight or sorting, resulting in toxic air pollution that impacts Israeli towns on both sides of the Green Line.

The hearing included Defense Minister Israel Katz (Likud) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party), who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, with authority over settlement affairs.

During the meeting, the ministers decided to designate the illegal fires and the resulting air pollution as a national security threat, declaring the phenomenon a national emergency.

“We will not allow residents of communities adjacent to the seam line to inhale smoke that poisons and harms health. We have set a series of steps. First of all, we declared this a national phenomenon at the highest level that must be addressed as a national problem, and the IDF and everyone else will be mobilized to solve this problem,” said Katz. “We will take all steps to stop this phenomenon.”

“All lawbreakers, Palestinians and others, will be dealt with firmly, and together we will uproot this issue, stop it, and deliver very important news—through you, the heads of the local authorities—to your residents. We are going to handle this with the utmost seriousness and with full force, to solve the problem once and for all.”

Katz and Smotrich vowed aggressive enforcement efforts to put a stop to the illegal garbage burning operations, which regularly leave towns in central Israel like Modi’in, Shoham, and Rosh Ha’Ayin blanketed with toxic black smoke.

The plan backed by the ministers would also promote alternative garbage disposal systems to remove trash from Palestinian towns to a central waste dump.

Smotrich called the illegal fires “environmental terrorism,” lamenting that the smoke not only harms Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria, but also crosses the Green Line into pre-1967 Israeli towns.

“Environmental terrorism proves that the Green Line is virtual, and when Judea and Samaria are the backyard of the State of Israel, it is the entire people of Israel who are harmed. We are erasing the Green Line and taking responsibility.”

“We will eradicate this phenomenon through enforcement, removal of the waste, harsh and painful fines, and of course by creating alternatives for waste disposal while imposing the cost on the Palestinian Authority.”

One month ago, officials from the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration held a joint meeting with a team from the Environmental Protection Ministry, headed by Minister Idit Silman (Likud), to draft plans for combating the pirate garbage disposal operations.

The plan put together by the Civil Administration and the EPA will be funded through 35.7 million shekels ($10.95 million) in funds expropriated from the Palestinian Authority, via tax revenue collected by Israel on behalf of the PA from Palestinian Arabs employed inside the Jewish state.

A new dedicated enforcement unit is set to be deployed next year to shut down illegal garbage burning sites and to prosecute those operating them, while Israeli firefighters will be enlisted to extinguish unauthorized fires.

Bezalel SmotrichFiresgarbageIsrael Katzpollution