Protestors prevent trucks from unloading garbage in West Bank dump

mashriq / arabia / iraq | repression / prisoners | news report Wednesday April 13, 2005 18:52 by sovietpop - wsm sovietpop at hotmail dot com

Anarchists Against the Wall

Some 200 Israeli and Palestinian protestors Monday attempted to block garbage trucks coming from the center of the country from entering a garbage dump near the West Bank town of Nablus.

Haaretz revealed last week that Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green Line and dump it in the West Bank for the first time since 1967. The dump was in its final stages of construction.

The activists, members of the Anarchists Against the Fence movement, green movements, as well as Palestinians from the West Bank, arrived at the dump to prevent the trucks from unloading garbage in the site.

See link below for full story
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/563634.html

Another report has also been posted on AInfos

The people of Dir Sharef can smell the occupation when they drive out of the village. They can taste it in olives and in the water and breath it in when the wind blows from the quarry. Dir Sharef is a village of 5300 people in the Nablus district of Palestine. Today, for the first time, a demonstration was held against a new garbage dump which has been operating in the area for two years. The dump has recently received a lot of attention after a story in Ha'aretz exposed a plan to dump millions of tons of Israeli trash at the dump and that the dump does not meet environmental standards. See the story in Haaretz (in Hebrew)*


http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/563570.html
The demonstration marched from the village towards the quarry where the dump is located. About 150 people from the village and from Nablus turned out and were joined by internationals and Israelis. The marchers did not have to get very far to see and smell the damage done. Along the side of the road is a fast flowing river of sewage that runs very close to the main water source for 300,000 people who live in Nablus and 13 surrounding villages. A Grant from the German government is available for a water treatment plant but the Israeli authorities prevent Palestinian construction in area C. The quarry itself generates large amounts of dust that are probably the cause of a large number of respiratory illness in the area. At the far end of the quarry is the dump. The site is under preparation but the dumping has already started. In addition to the sewage, the dump site is also located close to the aquifer. The Israeli infrastructure ministry has decided that the site is unsuited for household dumping but tons of household garbage is already dumped there.

The dump site is chosen because it is cheaper to dump in Palestine but the dumping is not completely free. The settler regional council is charging the operators of the dump for the permission to use the site. Needless to say none of the proceeds will be used for the benefit of the Palestinians on whose land the dump is located.

See link below for full story
[http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos16212.html]