The plan violates international law. The Geneva Convention, signed by Israel, says a military occupying power is prohibited from using the occupied territory unless it benefits the local population. But since when did Israel care about the many international treaties it has signed? And why should it? The United States is expected to veto any international attempt to have Israel retreat from its ongoing destruction of Palestinian culture and nature. That is how the international system works.

On this occasion it is not about the illegal settlers, the settlements, or the Annexation Wall, which are all so benevolently imposed on the local population, who – along with most of the rest of the world – are still at a loss to realize how all these Israeli uses of occupied territory benefit it. The latest outrage in the Middle East is an Israeli plan, already partly implemented, to dump up to 10,000 tons a month of its own garbage across the 1967 ‘Green Line’ in Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Not only that! The dumping site selected – Abu Shusha, near Nablus, the largest Palestinian city aside from Jerusalem – was a Palestinian quarry, which Palestinians will now be unable to use. Moreover, the dumping site, which is the size of a football stadium, is close to the Mountain Aquifer, one of the largest sources of freshwater in the whole of Historic Palestine (including Israel). Any leaks from the 120,000 tons of waste a year that the Israelis plan to drop there are likely to end up in that water, with the risk of poisoning it. Palestinians are already critically short of fresh water, because Israel will not let them use their own water. Israel prohibits Palestinians from drilling wells. It allows Palestinians only 70 liters of water per person per day. Israelis, however, get 350 liters. The minimal quantity of water recommended by the World Health Organization is 100 liters. When supplies run dry during summer months, the Israeli water company, Mekorot, which has a monopoly on the water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, simply shuts off the valves that supply Palestinian towns. This means settlers get their swimming pools topped up while Palestinian villages a few miles away run out of drinking water.

In a typical Israeli reaction to the news of the use of the Abu Shusha dump, the army’s ‘civil administration’ (the military occupation authority) announced that it has now temporarily halted construction after it was discovered that the bottom of the garbage pit was not properly insulated. Garbage already dumped, hundreds of tons of it, would now be removed before nylon sheeting is installed to line the floor of the dump, the army said. But what if the nylon is eventually ripped by the sheer weight of the trash? What if toxic waste spills out over the sides of the floor? What if there is an earthquake? The ‘civil’ administration now also says that the dump will take Palestinian, as well as Israeli, waste. But Yossi Sarid, the left-wing Israeli parliamentarian and former environment minister, told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz that the dump is a “double crime,” since “Israel is preventing the Palestinians from making use of the quarry and its resources and in exchange we are giving them Sharon’s garbage.”

What the ‘civil’ administration is actually trying to do is damage control, mainly by means of media spin. The calculation seems to be that if Israel can get its hands on some Palestinian garbage now and redirect it to Abu Shusha, then the use of the Occupied Palestinian Territories will suddenly seem to benefit the local population, and Israel will no longer be breaking international law in Abu Shusha.

But this is not the time to be separating trash from trash according to national origin. All Israeli garbage dumped on Palestinian territory is illegal. This is the time to go one step further than the former Israeli environment minister’s condemnation of the practice and to stop the crimes of Israel, whether single, double, or multiple. By the way, some of the garbage will come from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim. Maybe this is all the army means by “Palestinian” waste.

There are no settlements near the dump site; however, there are four Palestinian villages and thousands of Palestinian olive and almond trees within two miles of the dump. They will be the ones to suffer first and foremost from pollution emanating from the dump. And the inhabitants of those villages or the owners of those olive and almond groves were never asked for permission or advice, neither by the army, nor by the Israeli private firms that operate the dump. Those firms say that the choice of Abu Shusha is a way to raise profits and cut costs by a quarter, compared to the use of garbage dumps on Israeli territory. But what are those cut costs? Do they – by any remote chance – include environmental protection measures?

The companies participating in the project include D.S.H., a Netanya-based garbage disposal company owned by the Valensi family, and Baron Industrial Park, a company owned jointly by town councils in Israel and the illegal settlement of Kedumim’s town council. Ha’aretz reported that the initial use of the dump, which started six months ago, was illegal because Israel has not yet issued a tender, as required by State law. Furthermore, an approval by the Israeli Environment Ministry is also missing.

MIFTAH condemns all breaches of international law, whoever the perpetrator may be. An investigation by Israeli authorities, specifically civil, is also called for, since Israeli law also appears to have been violated on a number of issues. The basic problem behind this latest scandal, not the first scandal involving Israeli waste disposal in Palestine, is the illegal military occupation of Palestine by Israel.