Dear friends,
Reminds me of a past issue that I helped our mayor at the time write about:
Settlers and Trash, by MAYOR WALID HAMAD (November 06, 2002).
The issues just keep getting recycled…
Add the politics of trash to the matrix of occupation,
Sam
—
Haaretz
Smoke and trash || Palestinian town left
reeking due to bureaucratic gap
In an unusual display of environmental
sensitivity, Israel‘s Civil Administration shuts down El Bireh’s
landfill; the city responds by emptying its garbage trucks around town.
By Amira Hass |
Aug. 31, 2013
 |
| An ad-hoc garbage dump in El Bireh; the official site’s closure did not come as a surprise. Photo by Emil Salman |
Garbage cans are overflowing and emitting a nauseatingly
sweet smell, and in some of them there are flames at night that shoot off
embers in all directions. There are piles of smoking refuse at the sides of the
roads and in the various neighborhoods. That is the look and the odor of El
Bireh these days, where a garbage war is being waged.
In the days following the closure of the El Bireh landfill by the Civil
Administration on August 7, the municipality trucks still collected garbage
from about 800 containers around the city but tossed it into open areas and
wadis at the edges of the built-up areas. Unemployed young men showed up
immediately and set fire to the piles, so that it would be easier for them to
remove iron and other metals from the waste.
The neighbors responded to the double nuisance by blocking the paths to the
improvised dump sites with tires and rocks to make it harder for the
municipality’s trucks to reach them. They found an unexpected ally: the Israel
Defense Forces. Because the improvised dumping sites are near the settlement
Psagot and the Beit El checkpoint, soldiers and bulldozers were sent into the
El Bireh municipal area (although it
is defined as Area C, which is under Israeli security and civil control) to impound the municipality’s trucks and
to pour dirt on the wreaking piles, whose smoke rose and reached the homes of
Psagot.
Midweek, after the soldiers had confiscated the fifth truck, garbage
collection from the streets stopped (another
two trucks were being repaired). In the garbage war it is waging, the El Bireh
municipality expects the Palestinian Authority and residents to understand that
the closing of the site is not a municipal failure, but a reflection of the
broader political reality of the relations between occupier and occupied.
The Civil Administration decided that for reasons of environmental
protection, the El Bireh waste-disposal site should be closed, even before the
construction of a modern and safe alternative, which has been under discussion
since 1999. The municipality petitioned the High Court of Justice against the
closure order, through attorneys Shelly Dvir and Yuri Gai-Ron. The legal
procedure and the negotiations between the parties postponed implementation of
the closure by a year and a half, from January
1, 2012, to this month. The closing did not come as a surprise to
the municipality, although that is the impression one gets from its press
campaigns.
On February 7, the High Court justices wrote that with the consent of the
parties, the site would continue to operate until August 7, and during that
period the use of one of the alternatives dictated by Civil Administration
experts would be arranged: transport of the garbage either to a private
Palestinian dumping site in Jenin or to the one in Abu Dis, which is itself
about to be closed because it is hazardous.
From the start, the El Bireh municipality claimed that it doesn’t have the
money for transport and for the dumping fees, that, according to an initial
calculation, would eat up about a tenth of its budget − which itself runs some
NIS 60-70 million annually.
With the PA in financial distress, and its principal donors suffering
financial crises of their own, it was hard for El Bireh to consider taking on
this extraordinary expense. And apparently there were some people in the
municipality who hoped that a miracle would postpone the decree. This has also
been the most difficult period in the history of this city, in terms of
administration: The decision to close the site (first announced at the end of 2011) came when the municipality and the local council were headed
by elected Hamas officials. In February 2012, the PA disbanded the elected
council, but it wasn’t until the end of last year that local elections were
held, in which the Fatah slate won, and the new council only started to realize
what was going on.
The El Bireh waste-disposal site was built in 1978 in Wadi Shikhan. It
covers some 70 dunams (about 17
acres), most of it private land owned by city
residents. In 1981, the settlement of Psagot was built on a summit that
overlooks all of El Bireh and in some parts is only a few meters away from its
eastern neighborhoods. The disposal site is situated about one kilometer
northeast of the settlement. According to the interim agreements that were
signed in 1995, the site is within Area C − territory that is under Israeli
civil and security administration.
Since the outbreak of the second intifada, 13 years ago, the road to the
site has been blocked to Palestinians by a military gate, with the IDF and the
Civil Administration restricting entry to garbage trucks to a few hours a day.
Fences, roadblocks, locked gates, military patrols and settlements − all have
become the impassable eastern boundary of El Bireh and its residents, although
much of their land is to the east of it.
Bureaucratic maze
The closing of the site demonstrates the bureaucratic maze created by the
interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, a
situation that has in the meantime become permanent: The IDF remains the
sovereign in the entire area of the West Bank, and as such it has shed
responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinian residents and instead imposed
it on the PA − with its consent.
The PA has the authority and ability to fulfill this responsibility only in
separate enclaves that account for less that 40 percent of the West
Bank. In over 60 percent, Israel
maintains the civil authority to build, demolish, close or open new ecological
facilities or prevent their construction. That is how Israel
can order closure of a Palestinian waste-disposal site or delay the
construction of a new one without having moral or budgetary responsibility for
that. Even if the residents know this, for them the municipality is still the
“address” at which to direct their anger.
But the Civil Administration had good reason for ordering the closing of the
site, as proven by an opinion it submitted to the court on January 14, written
by Einat Bronstein of the Environmental Protection Ministry. Her conclusion is
unequivocal: “The site constitutes a focus for serious and continuing pollution
of the environment. The site is operating without any environmental protection
infrastructure and constitutes a potential of active pollution of the environment
for many years, by releasing polluting gases into the air and introducing
pollutants underground …”
It turns out that the judges preferred this official opinion to an opinion
brought by the petitioners, written by Daniel Morgenstern, an economic and
environmental consultant. He wrote at the end of 2011 that the operation of the
site should be permitted for another three years, until the opening of a
properly regulated alternative.
The closure order is a testimony to the progress that the Israeli
authorities have made in their environmental awareness. In its response to El
Bireh’s petition, the state declared that the site built by the El Bireh
municipality “is operating unlawfully and without planning arrangements.” What
it neglected to mention, however, is that it was constructed during a period
when not a stone was moved without the knowledge and approval of the military
commander − during a period when the IDF, and later the Civil Administration,
were theoretically responsible for Palestinian residents’ welfare and issues
such as planning and environment. Those are the authorities that permitted
Psagot to bury its garbage, starting in 1982, in the unregulated site. They are
also the authorities that in the early 1990s allowed the settlements in the
Mateh Binyamin Regional Council to inter their garbage at a site that was
operating “unlawfully.” From 2003 to 2010, the Civil Administration also
permitted Modi’in Illit and Givat Ze’ev to transport their refuse there.
In 2010, El Bireh buried 13,380 tons of waste at its site, as compared to
29,478 tons interred by the settlements. The settlements paid fees to the
Samaria Town Association for Environmental Quality, which, starting in 2003,
became the acting administrator of the site and hired the operations
contractor. El Bireh municipality officials say that from the start, the site
was designated for the city’s garbage, and not for the substantial amount of
additional waste that was forced on it.
One of the riddles that remained unsolved during the legal discussion is
related to the fact that on February
27, 2011, the Civil Administration was still suggesting an
expansion of the site, although already then there was awareness of the
environmental damage it was causing. It was decided at the time that a team
from the Samaria Towns Association for Environmental Quality would prepare an
expansion plan that would make its operation possible until the opening of the
modern and environmentally friendly site, and implementation of an advanced
recycling plan in the settlements. The municipality claims that the moment they
expressed reservations due to the proximity of the proposed expansion to the
homes of El Bireh − the threats to close the site began, and were in fact
carried out.
The justices also preferred the Civil Administration’s position to that of
the Towns Association, as reflected in its reply to the El Bireh petition. “The
Civil Administration refrained throughout recent years from intervening in the
administration of the site apparently because professional environmental groups
in the Civil Administration backed the Associations’ in the administration of
the site,” wrote attorney Rina Avenchik, representing the association. “The
reservations of the Civil Administration regarding the plan submitted by the
association to continue the use of the site on a temporary basis for the El
Bireh municipality and the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, is therefore
surprising …”
Sharon Ahdut, spokesman of the Towns Association, told Haaretz that “in our
opinion, too, the site is not environmental (especially with regard to polluting ground water), but we claimed that as long as the Palestinians have no
better alternative, it should continue to operate, while it is rehabilitated
with Israeli funding (which could
have been increased), since El Bireh didn’t have money to pay
for the interment. Rehabilitation after the cessation of that process can and
should be done with external funding. We sent a proposal to the head of the
Civil Administration to build a facility for sorting the waste and treating it
using the MBT (mechanical-biological treatment) method − anaerobic + aerobic digestion in closed containers to produce energy and
compost [a German method] that can be built at the site itself.”
According to the association’s inspections, the site in Jenin that the Civil
Administration dictated as an alternative for El Bireh’s waste is neglected in
terms of environmental operation. Like the municipality, the association thinks
that transportation to that site would itself not be environmentally friendly
“in terms of the energy cost of the transportation and in terms of the
dispersal of pollutants.”
In the meantime, the garbage is rolling around in the streets of El Bireh.
One night firefighters were summoned: In their frustration, supermarket
employees had set fire to the contents of the overflowing garbage container and
didn’t notice that it was standing directly beneath a high-tension wire. One of
the municipality employees shouted over the phone at the person responsible:
“You could have incinerated not only the container but the entire city.”
The spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the
Territories responded to an inquiry from Haaretz with the following statement:
“In protest of the High Court ruling and the closure of the site that operated
illegally, and without the required permits, for many years, the Palestinians
began to burn their own garbage there, thus exacerbating the environmental
damage. This hurts both the Palestinian and Jewish populations in the area. In
light of this, the Civil Administration has been active in conducting talks and
meeting with PA officials and representatives of the El Bireh municipality, in
an attempt to come to an arrangement and to an end to the protests, and also in
enforcing the regulations. The latter includes impounding various equipment as well,
including four garbage trucks.”
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/.premium-1.544449
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