Global & US Headlines
Israel Declares West Bank Waste Fires ‘Environmental Terrorism,’ Launches Seizure-Funded Cleanup Plan
On 18 Dec 2025 Israel’s finance and defense ministers re-classified Palestinian waste-burning in the West Bank as a national-security threat and approved an open-ended emergency program that lets the IDF confiscate Palestinian garbage trucks, build a new landfill, and bill every shekel to the Palestinian Authority.
Focusing Facts
- Military order issued 18 Dec 2025 empowers Israeli forces to seize Palestinian waste haulers, with unlimited budget for contractors and equipment.
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said cleanup costs will be deducted directly from the Palestinian Authority’s clearance revenues that Israel collects.
- State comptroller report noted only two legal landfills serve the 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank, driving decades-long resort to open burning.
Context
Using environmental harm as a pretext for new jurisdiction echoes Britain’s 1945 Defense (Emergency) Regulations—still on Israel’s books—that turned public-health nuisances into security matters. By branding trash fires as “terrorism,” Jerusalem continues the post-1967 trend of blurring the Green Line: first through settlement blocs in the 1970s, later via the 2002 security barrier, and now with ecological enforcement. Financial leverage—skimming PA tax receipts—mirrors the 2019 deductions over prisoner stipends and further erodes the already fragile Oslo-era fiscal dependency structure. Over a 100-year horizon this episode matters less for smoke abatement than for its incremental annexation logic: each new civilian issue placed under IDF authority normalizes direct Israeli governance of West Bank life and weakens prospects for a distinct Palestinian polity, moving the conflict one administrative measure closer to de-facto one-state reality.
Perspectives
Right-leaning Jewish and pro-Israeli media
e.g., Jewish News Syndicate, The Times of Israel — Present the Palestinian waste-burning as “environmental terrorism” that endangers Israeli civilians and fully justifies sweeping security, fiscal and military measures announced by Smotrich and Katz. By adopting the ministers’ framing almost verbatim, these outlets amplify a nationalist narrative, downplay Palestinian civil-infrastructure shortfalls, and overlook how the policy also expands Israel’s control beyond the Green Line.
Pan-Arab media
e.g., Middle East Monitor, Arab News, Al Arabiya — Cast Smotrich’s plan to seize Palestinian tax revenues and label waste fires a security threat as another far-right move to punish Palestinians and entrench occupation/settlement expansion. The coverage highlights Israeli oppression but gives scant space to the documented health hazards of the fires or the role of Palestinian actors, fitting a broader editorial incentive to foreground Israeli transgressions.
Israeli liberal media
Haaretz — Report the emergency plan while noting rhetoric like “erasing the Green Line” and settlers raising flags in Gaza, signalling that the initiative is part of a wider push to annex West Bank territory. Haaretz’s critical tone toward the current government may lead it to foreground annexation concerns and settler activism, potentially understating environmental damage felt inside Israel that drives public pressure.