30 July - 5 August 2012 - orsam

Palestinians for political reasons. While solid waste in the settlements is moved to regulated landfills,
the Palestinians operate many dozens of pirate solid waste disposal facilities. In addition, Israeli-
Palestinian cooperation of a certain kind exacerbates the situation: Israelis smuggle construction
debris for disposal on the other side of the Green Line.
―The laws aren‘t sufficiently enforced by the Civil Administration or the Environmental Protection
Ministry,‖ says the report. ―It is not uncommon for Israelis to hire Palestinians to dispose of solid or
construction waste on public land.‖
Is Palestinian unwillingness to cooperate with Israel for political reasons the only, or even major,
explanation for the grim situation on the other side of the Green Line? An in-depth study of the report
shows that even its own authors realize that there are additional factors explaining the Palestinians‘
inability to tackle waste disposal and wastewater treatment.
One of the writers, Dr. Nitzan Levy, director of the Municipal Environmental Associations of Judea
and Samaria, notes that there is a significant difference between the organizational and professional
capabilities of the Palestinians and those of Israel. He stresses the fact that the Environmental
Protection Ministry hasn‘t formulated a problem-solving strategy that takes into account the gap in
the sides‘ capabilities. In another part of the report, its authors admit that limitations on movement
and access had made it difficult to build environmental infrastructures on the Palestinian side.
What the report fails to note is the fact that the very establishment of the settlements was a political
act almost completely disconnected from environmental concerns or long-term planning. The
settlements were built in order to grab land for Jews by establishing many dozens of residential
points and small outposts, requiring the extensive – and expensive – dispersion of infrastructures and
roads.
There were cases, also mentioned in the report, in which ―The cost of the race to put facts on the
ground by Israeli settlement activity was paid by nature. Some of the construction and expansions in
the settlement program encroached on nature reserves.‖
The outcome was that for many years the settlements did not have appropriate solutions to
wastewater and solid waste. Some of the problems have been solved in recent years only thanks to
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