- Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green
Line and dump it in the West Bank for the first time since 1967. The project
was launched despite international treaties prohibiting an occupying state
from making use of occupied territory unless it benefits the local population.
-
- In addition, pollution experts say such use of the Kedumim
quarry - located in an old Palestinian quarry between the Kedumim settlement
and Nablus - will jeopardize Palestinian water sources.
-
- The dump operators plan to deposit some 10,000 tons of
garbage from the Dan and Sharon regions every month in what was known as
the Abu Shusha quarry, the largest in the West Bank. In the last few days
trucks and bulldozers have been covering the quarry's floor with brown
soil to turn it into a garbage dump. Huge semi-trailer trucks are to bring
the Sharon and Dan garbage, which will be amassed at the Hadarim garbage
station near Tel Mond prison, to the quarry.
-
- The construction is being carried out by Baron Industrial
Park, a company jointly owned by the councils of Kedumim and Karnei Shomron
and the Shomron Regional Council. The Hadarim site is operated by D.S.H.,
a private, Netanya-based garbage disposal company owned by the Valensi
family.
-
- The initiative started out as an idea to rehabilitate
a 15-dunam plot in the quarry by filling it with building waste, junk and
shredded tires. It evolved into a huge project spread over dozens of dunams
for household garbage, operated as a private business and expected to yield
tens of millions of shekels.
-
- Transferring Israeli garbage to the West Bank will be
much cheaper for D.S.H. than taking it to a site in Israel. Local and regional
councils pay NIS 90 to NIS 105 for removing a ton of garbage to a transit
station in Israel. They pay the dump some NIS 40 per ton for depositing
the waste and the transporter gets another NIS 30 per ton.
-
- The profit is NIS 20 to NIS 35 per ton. But burying the
garbage in the Kedumim dump, according to an internal Baron Park document,
will cost a mere NIS 30 per ton, leaving a greater profit in the hands
of the entrepreneurs and operators.
-
- Transferring the Israeli garbage to Samaria will bring
the company a profit of NIS 6 per ton, totaling some NIS 60,000 a month.
-
- Israel's construction and operation of the Kedumim dump
appears to be in violating the international law, as it involves transferring
garbage to territory defined as occupied. Second, experts warn that the
dump would jeopardize the Mountain Aquifer, one of the largest freshwater
sources in Israel and Palestine. This is because the dump, which was originally
used for "dry waste," will receive and absorb household garbage
with organic substances.
-
- It is also unclear whether the procedures for constructing
and operating the dump on state land were carried out according to the
law, or how bulldozers are working at the site before a final construction
permit has been issued.
-
- Why has the civil administration failed to take measures
against Baron Industrial Park for allowing D.S.H. - six months ago - to
dump hundreds of tons of garbage in the site in violation of the law and
before the Environment Ministry and Water Commission approved it?
-
- West Bank sources say the reason for the civil administration's
inaction is that everyone is afraid of Daniella Weiss, the council head
of Kedumim, one of the owners of Baron Park.
-
- The biggest mystery is how D.S.H., of all companies,
was allowed to build and operate a very profitable waste site on state
land without any tender being issued, as required by law.
-
- The Kedumim dump will create an absurd situation. The
West Bank is filled with illegal Palestinian garbage dumps, which constitute
serious environmental hazards and jeopardize the groundwater, because the
civil administration refuses to let Palestinians build modern waste disposal
sites. The most modern dump being built there - the Kedumim dump - is intended
only for garbage from Israel.
-
- "We are dealing with a double crime," says
MK Yossi Sarid, former environment minister. "On the one hand, Israel
is preventing the Palestinians from making use of the quarry and its resources,
and in exchange we are giving them the Sharon's garbage. I believe this
is a violation of international treaties."
-
- Iche Meir, the director of the union of Samaria local
authorities for the environment, said the work had been done without the
union's approval and was illegal.
-
- The civil administration issued an order to stop the
work on the site and Baron Park was instructed to move the garbage and
start the insulation work on the quarry floor again, as a condition for
the Environment Ministry's approval.
-
- Haaretz has learned that although the environment minister
has not yet approved the work on the dump, and despite the civil administration's
order to stop the construction, the bulldozers are still working on the
site.
-
- A civil administration spokesman commented that he was
unable to provide the answers to the legal issues, due to lack of time.
He said the Kedumim council head gave D.S.H. a permit to operate a garbage
dump before the plan was approved by the authorities and this is why the
civil administration ordered the work to stop.
-
- <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
|