Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman on Wednesday presented the main points of what she called a strategic plan to deal with illegal waste burning in the West Bank and stop pollution that crosses the Green Line into Israel.
As an immediate move, the ministry has allocated NIS 40 million ($12.4 million) to help rehabilitate one of only two landfill sites serving the West Bank, and to hire additional inspectors, including at checkpoints along the Green Line, where Israeli trucks illegally transport Israeli waste into the West Bank for burning to save having to pay Israeli landfill fees.
Silman’s plan calls for Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank to fast-track building permits for a new landfill site at Ramun, near Ramallah. This is to include a sorting facility and accept trash from Israeli settlements too.
A long-term plan foresees the establishment of sites that will burn waste to create energy at Tarkumiya, northwest of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and at Rantis, northwest of Ramallah.
Silman told the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environmental Protection Committee that she was examining the idea of a new hotline for public complaints, which would bring together the environment and finance ministries, the Fire and Rescue Service, the Israel Police and the Civil Administration.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman attends a Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee meeting on June 3, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
An additional three air monitoring stations will be established along the Green Line, she said.
Silman is requesting NIS 134.6 million ($41.6 million) from the Finance Ministry to enable the Civil Administration to employ additional inspectors, investigators and prosecutors, and to boost inspections along the Israeli side of the Green Line, where illegal waste burning is also taking place, primarily in Arab municipalities.
Stopping the fires in the West Bank has become a hot-button public issue in recent weeks, with the NGO Citizens for Clean Air reporting an uptick in complaints from Israelis about transboundary pollution.
NGO chairman Yaniv Bleicher told The Times of Israel after the Knesset debate that the Environmental Protection Ministry had focussed on low-hanging fruit, and that instead, the Prime Minister’s Office should be coordinating between the many bodies involved to solve what is a national problem.
Smoke from waste fires in the West Bank near northern Israel’s Harish in an undated photo from 2025. (Dolev Hilell)
In a report last year, the State Comptroller cited the lack of waste treatment and landfill sites in the West Bank, and the high cost of transporting waste to far-off facilities, as among the reasons for the illegal dumping and burning phenomenon in the West Bank.
He estimated that cross-border pollution costs the Israeli economy around NIS 1.3 billion (just under $400 million) yearly.
The burning of Palestinian municipal waste is compounded by widespread smuggling from Israel into the West Bank of electronic waste, which is burned for the extraction of metal.
Israeli trucks carrying electronic waste pass through 31 official checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank and many unofficial ones, the Knesset meeting heard.
Israeli border police officers guard near the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem, March 27, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In June 2023, the government ordered the environment and defense ministries to establish an inter-ministerial team to formulate a comprehensive plan for dealing with the problem within six months.
That dragged on, with the Environmental Protection Ministry blaming the Defense Ministry for delays, until Silman decided to push ahead with her plan. The Defense Ministry must agree to it before it can be brought for government approval.
At the Knesset hearing, Dafna Ravid-Rabinovich, the mayor of Shoham, a central town close to the West Bank, described a trip to the towns of Budrus and Shuqba in the northern West Bank. “In Budrus, I saw parts of cars being burned. In Shuqba, I saw whole cows and animal parts from a slaughterhouse being burned,” she said.
“What are the residents of Shoham supposed to do? They phone the fire service and get shouted at. They ring the District Coordination and Liaison Office [which coordinates with the Palestinians] and get no satisfaction. Who are we supposed to phone? I already have monitoring stations, and we see high [pollution]. What do we do with this?”
Silman, committee chairman Yitzhak Kreuzer (Otzma Yehudit), and other right-wing figures insisted that the waste burning was a form of deliberate Palestinian “terror” and that the IDF should deal with it as such.
“These materials [being burned] cause cancer,” said Silman. “This is environmental terrorism, which is only increasing. We need to deal with it like terror.”
Explaining that funds spent by Israel on the waste problem would be deducted from tax money Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority on imports and exports, she said she had asked to open a Judea and Samaria unit in the Environmental Protection Ministry so that Israel could establish “environmental sovereignty” in the West Bank, and that she could lead the country’s response to the fires.
You appreciate our journalism
You clearly find our careful reporting valuable, in a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.
Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically since October 7.
So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you’ll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
