The affair of the Kedumim garbage dump that was first reported here (Haaretz, April 4) has given rise to a stench that is not limited to the ecological implications of moving Israeli waste to the heart of the Palestinian population but also exemplifies the rot, the greed, the manipulativeness and the hypocrisy upon which Israeli control of the territories is based.

Attention has been drawn to the damage that will be caused to Palestinian locales and to the pollution of their ground water, and to the disregard of international law prohibiting such deeds in occupied territories. But this criticism, with all its importance, diverts attention from the main issue and - one suspects - contributes to the legitimization of a perverted and destructive system by dealing with the margins of the stink and not its core.

And what is the main issue? Three Israeli municipal bodies (the Kedumim and the Karnei Shimron councils and the Samaria regional council), which are themselves illegal bodies under international law, that were established 25 years ago with typical stealth to set up a regime of annexation on the basis of ethnic criteria, have taken control of lands stolen from Palestinian inhabitants. With the approval of the government of Israel and with the active support of a sympathetic government element, they embarked on economic activity that affords them huge profits. Among other things, the profits are used to finance illegal "unauthorized outposts" and fund violent demonstrations against legal decisions of a legal government and of the Knesset. Aside from the profits, the Kedumim dump has added political value that is even greater than the economic value: In this way Jewish settlers in the West Bank are taking control of open areas and Judaizing them. The number of Jews who live in the settlements and the expansion of their built-up area have ceased to serve as a reliable measure of the success of the annexation of territories and the thwarting of the establishment of a Palestinian state, and instead it is necessary to put in place the Kedumim dump and all the other similar land-devouring economic projects going up all over the West Bank, which have become the new symbols of Zionism in the Yesha style (the settlers' acronym for the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which means "salvation" in Hebrew). Just when all attention is on the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and from northern Samaria (West Bank), along comes the Kedumim dump affair, demonstrating how control of land resources has ceased to be a means for building Jewish settlements and has become a financial tool for creating a state within a state, stealing the Palestinian population's physical expanse and thwarting any chance of peace.

The settlers' leaders, who have accumulated incredible political and financial power, are cynically amusing themselves with impotent government elements and loving how everyone is looking for ridiculous and absurd excuses: Indeed a permit had been given, but only for one kind of waste; they will also allow intake of Palestinian waste that doesn't smell; and, anyway, what's the problem? This is a welcome activity of improving the landscape - and a lot more clickings of the tongue. This tragicomic theater piece has a perfect actress in Daniella Weiss, the head of the Kedumim council, who has this time chosen to play, with great importance, her statutory role and put her incitement activity on hold. Not long ago she crudely attacked Israel Defense Forces officers who met at Kedumim and kicked them out, whereas now she is "handing out licenses in accordance with her authority," and no one is bursting out in bitter laughter.

It must be acknowledged that Weiss has contributed an important insight. She says that "on the ecological issue the view has to be from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. In the matter of waste there must be no separation between the Palestinians and Israel, because each side affects the other." Indeed, inspiring words that should challenge those who are hiding behind the formal argument about violation of international law. Indeed, the area from the west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is a single ecological unit and the two populations that live in it exist on the same water resources and breathe the same air. Any peace agreement will have to take this fact into account and find ways for a coexistence that is based on "distributive justice," for if not, the instability and the violence will continue.

But this is not what is meant by Daniella Weiss, and very many of us. She aspires to perpetuate the status quo, that is, to keep the proportionate use of the common environmental resources at its current level, which is extremely unequal: The Palestinians, who constitute about 40 percent of the inhabitants of the relevant ecological unit will get 8 percent of the water resources, 13 percent of the land - and zero meters of swimming beach per person - and their per capita income will remain at one-tenth of Israeli per capita income. Most of us cling to the perception that Israel is entitled to hold a near monopoly on the environmental resources, and the Palestinians are entitled to use only the leftovers.

And if they demand a more just distribution, we will use arguments about an ecological threat to prove that the Palestinian demand is unreasonable and disastrous. The Kedumim waste dump is another step in entrenching this ecological-political inequality and all the talk about how the Palestinians will also be allowed to throw garbage there is arrogant hypocrisy. The political implications, in the long term, of the Kedumim dump are more serious than another few thousand Jewish settlers. How many of those whose sensitive nostrils have been offended by the stench correctly understand these implications and are prepared to enlist to thwart them?