OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, March 17 (News Agencies) - The Palestinian Authority’s minister for the environment, Yousef Abu Safiyya, has accused Israel of turning the Palestinian Authority-ruled area of the West Bank into a vast dumping-ground for its domestic industrial, chemical and nuclear waste, risking a potentially catastrophic environmental nightmare.
The highly toxic material is not only from Israel’s factories and defense establishments, but also from Jewish settlements, whose European and American inhabitants pursue lifestyles that generate huge amounts of refuse.
In press interviews earlier this month, Dr. Abu Safiyya explained that the Israelis save money by hiring Palestinians to bury the material for a pittance, instead of treating it in their own facilities at a very high cost.
The secret dumping was first discovered after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and although some dumping-grounds have been discovered, the minister said that more may yet be found. He said that the PA had the equipment to monitor dumping.
Abu Safiyya cited the discovery of 29 barrels of toxic waste in the Khan Younis region. An analysis of their contents showed it is toxic waste from Jewish settlements.
The settlers bribe Palestinians to smuggle the waste into PA areas and dump it. The destruction of a barrel of toxic waste at Israel’s national environmental facility costs $2,000; smuggling a barrel into Palestinian areas costs only $25, which is paid to the Palestinian hired hand who, of course, is unaware of the health risks he is running.
The PA has also discovered hundreds of barrels in the north of the West Bank over the last two years and are presently talking to Israeli authorities about 223 barrels of toxic waste in the Jenin area that the Israelis refuse to collect.
"I met with the Israeli minister for the environment and asked her to apply the Basil Treaty, which is the relevant international instrument on the movement of toxic material, but she replied that international treaties do not apply to Palestinians because they have no state," Abu Safiyya said.
The Israelis turned down the request to remove the waste saying it was out of their hands. "They told us that they could not receive the barrels because Israeli law bans the movement of toxic material inside Israel except on the approval of top officials," Dr Abu Safiyya explained.
The toxic waste, dumped in the West Bank, ranges from the by-products of the Israeli military industry, some of which are radioactive, to chemical substances that are highly damaging to the environment. Some are so toxic that they are capable of causing cancer on a massive scale. Thirty cancer-causing chemicals
have so far been identified, Abu Safiyya said.
This lethal poisoning of the Palestinian environment comes on top of the fall-out from experiments and tests at Israel’s Dimona nuclear station.
Israel, which officially denies having nuclear weapons, has been known to carry out tests with U.S. financial backing and expertise.
Palestinians believe that the sporadic earth tremors experienced in their areas are caused by the explosion of nuclear devices at Dimona nuclear station and in the desert.
In other countries, such tests are carried out in remote and uninhabited areas, but occupied Palestine is too small for that to be possible.
The minister also revealed that the ageing reactors at Dimona are the source of pollutants that are extremely damaging to the environment.
Not only are the reactors 30 years old, but there are also satellite pictures, which show that "the protective walls of the reactors have been eaten into," he said.
"And if nuclear substances escape into the atmosphere as a result of these defects, the Palestinian areas would be the most vulnerable because we have no protective capabilities," he added.
