Over 2,000 complaints were received about air pollution and bad odors over the past year and a half in the Jezreel Valley region. The fires are from Arab towns who don’t have the budget to treat their waste – and criminals have taken over the garbage collectionGift this article
Zafrir Rinat. November 11, 2025
The illegal burning of garbage is the main source of emissions of carcinogens into the air in Israel and the West Bank in recent years.
This causes air pollution and odors in communities near the Green Line – from the northern Sharon region to the Modi’in area – but it also exists in the north, and the Environmental Protection Ministry has been unable to reduce the hazards.
The problem is especially serious in the Jezreel Valley region and around the city of Nazareth, and both the Arab communities and the Jewish communities of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council are suffering. The fires burn in the Arab towns in the north, which find it difficult to deal with their waste because of the problematic financial condition of the local governments.
An additional problem is that criminal enterprises have taken control of the waste collection and are illegally transporting and disposing of it in open areas – instead of in regulated waste disposal sites.
Shlomit Shihor Reichman, the head of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council, asked the government to urgently deal with the problem two weeks ago.
“During the last year and a half, the council received over 2,000 complaints from residents about severe hazards of bad smells, air pollution, waste and fires,” she wrote. “Regretfully, despite our repeated requests to the relevant government ministries, we have found ourselves helpless.”
The fires and stench take place outside the jurisdiction of the regional council, so it does not have the legal or operational tools to deal with them directly, wrote Shihor Reichman: “This is, in part, a common occurrence of burning organic waste in open areas by criminal elements.”
Many of the homes in the communities of the regional council are surrounded by natural forest, so the illegal garbage fires are a real life-threatening danger if they spread to the nearby trees, added Shihor Reichman.
All the paths between the communities and open areas are filled with waste, Shihor Reichman told Haaretz. “This is not just regular garbage, but also burning tires, waste from slaughterhouses – and really anything that doesn’t have a solution for organized disposal.”
“There is a general problem here of a lack of governability. Our inspectors work to prevent it and are doing so almost every day, but it’s only within the areas of the council,” Shihor Reichman said.
“We are trying to create an enforcement force that will include, in addition to our inspector, a police officer and an inspector from the Environmental Protection ministry, who will be able to act outside the jurisdiction of the regional council,” she added.
System-wide treatment of the problem of waste disposal in the neighboring communities is needed, Shihor Reichman continued, mentioning in particular a number of Arab towns in the Lower Galilee close to Nazareth.
“Now that the war is behind us, we need to start moving funds to deal with this problem, too. It’s a daily problem, which I doubt would be tolerated in the center of the country,” she said.
Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman visited an illegal dumping site two weeks ago in the Arab town of Tur’an in the north, which has become one of the main centers for the illegal burning of waste.
At the end of the tour, Silman announced she intended to convene an emergency meeting with the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, Nitzan Peleg, representatives of the Interior and National Security ministries, police and Fire and Rescue Service.
The purpose of the meeting will be to formulate a multi-system operational plan to eliminate the waste fires and illegal dumping, said Silman. She has promised a number of times in the past to eradicate the problem, but for now, the situation is only getting worse.
Last week, Silman presented to a group of mayors in the center of the country the main points of the national plan to prevent pollution across borders, with an emphasis on illegal waste burning over the Green Line.
The plan includes expanding the enforcement system, including establishing a permanent team working in the field on the issue, building a new waste disposal site east of Ramallah in the West Bank, and constructing additional infrastructure to handle waste from the Palestinians, among other things.
The plan also includes international cooperation with foreign countries, mostly from the European Union, in which they will donate resources to expand the Palestinian waste treatment system. Silman did not say when the plan will be brought to the cabinet for approval.
Related Articles
- IDF disposes of huge piles of construction waste and rubble from Israel inside Gaza Yaniv Kubovich
- Israeli ministry slashes all funding for environmental groups in 2025 Zafrir Rinat
- Why does the fossil fuel industry still dominate in Israel? Zafrir Rinat
The Citizens for Clean Air nonprofit environmental group, which acts against the illegal burning of waste, said: “Presenting the national plan to prevent pollution is a step in the right direction, but without setting a schedule, allocating budgetary funds and establishing a clear mechanism for implementation, it will remain just on paper.”
The Environmental Protection Ministry declined to respond to questions from Haaretz on the burning of waste in the Lower Galilee and Jezreel Valley.