Palestine files complaint over Israel discharging dangerous waste on its lands

The Palestinian government filed a complaint to the general secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal regarding Israel discharging dangerous wastes on Palestinian lands, Felesteen newspaper reported on Wednesday.

In a statement, the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority said that it had filed the complaint regarding an incident involving two truckloads of Israeli waste on 12 April.

The statement said that the two trucks, which were held in cooperation with the Palestinian police, were smuggled from an Israeli industrial zone in the north of the West Bank city of Tulkarem and were heading to unload in Jenin.

According to the statement, Palestine is a signatory in the convention which aims to “protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes”.

It also stated that the convention obligates the signatories to bear the responsibility over moving the wastes from a country to another.

The convention was adopted on 22 March 1989 in Basel, in response to a public outcry following the discovery in the 1980s that deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad were dumped in developing countries.

The Palestinian Authority joined the convention in 2015.