Israeli leaders met Thursday to discuss plans to combat illegal Palestinian waste processing sites, where trash is burned without oversight or sorting, resulting in toxic air pollution which impacts Israeli towns on both sides of the Green Line.
During the meeting, the ministers decided to designate the illegal fires and the resulting air pollution as a national security threat, declaring the phenomenon a national emergency.
Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed aggressive enforcement efforts to put a stop to the illegal garbage burning operations, which regularly leave towns in central Israel like Modi’in, Shoham, and Rosh Ha’Ayin blanketed with toxic black smoke.
Smotrich called the illegal fires “environmental terrorism,” lamenting that the smoke not only harms Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria but also crosses the Green Line into pre-1967 Israeli towns. It is estimated that no fewer than 1400 Israelis die annually due to this eco-terrorism.
“Environmental terrorism proves that the Green Line is virtual, and when Judea and Samaria are the backyard of the State of Israel, it is the entire people of Israel who are harmed. We are erasing the Green Line and taking responsibility.”
A new dedicated enforcement unit is set to be deployed next year to shut down illegal garbage burning sites and to prosecute those operating them, while Israeli firefighters will be enlisted to extinguish unauthorized fires.