Israel closes West Bank landfill after complaints from illegal settlers

Israeli authorities closed on Tuesday a garbage dump site in the east of the West Bank city of Nablus under the pretext of complaints lodged by illegal Israeli Jewish settlers in a nearby settlement, Quds Press reported.

Local Palestinian sources said that the landfill site is used by the residents of the Rowejeb neighbourhood in the east of the city of Nablus.

Palestinian activist Mohamed Thabet told Quds Press that the Israeli authorities razed the road leading to the garbage dump and confiscated a truck and a bulldozer that were used to maintain the landfill and move the waste for disposal.

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Thabet said that the Israeli occupation had asked that Palestinian Authority (PA) to find another place for the landfill because the Israeli settlers at the illegal settlement of Itmar “feel bad when they smell smoke rising” from the landfill after waste is incinerated.

He also said that the village council of Rowejeb was obliged to temporarily move the landfill to another place pending a solution for the Israeli closure of the original landfill.

Quds Press reported rights groups saying that many Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods are suffering as a result of the waste produced by illegal Israeli Jewish settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank.

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The organisations, according to Quds Press, said that the Palestinians suffer from several problems and contract several diseases because of the waste produced by these illegal settlements, noting that they complained to the Israeli authorities but their complaints were ignored.