Hebron’s Sewage Crisis Flows South Toward the Negev

[00:00:00]Water flowing through the Judean Hills affects both Israelis and Palestinians, but much of it is dangerously polluted.

[00:00:08]Untreated sewage and waste from the stone industry travel roughly 27 miles, [music] crossing the administrative boundaries established by the Oslo Accords, flowing over the green line and [music] toward the Negev. Eliram Suliman, head of the Aracha Bron Regional Council, blames the Palestinian Authority for what he calls an environmental disaster.

[00:00:29]>> Sewage, as it is, sewage from the Palestinian Authority, from 800,000 Arabs, um go through the Hebron river, Hebron Valley. The sewage go into the the land, and after that, all the um all the sources of the water that not only we drinking, also the resident of Beersheba, Omer Lev, all the Negev, actually. All the Negev drink from those sources of water.

[00:01:09]>> A 2024 [music] report by Green Now estimates that Judea and Samaria generate around 90 million cubic meters of sewage each year. According to the report, 38 million cubic meters from Palestinian communities go untreated, while another 5 million cubic meters from Israeli communities are inadequately treated.

[00:01:29]>> The biggest problem affecting the Hebron stream is the stone industry in Hebron itself. It discharges waste water containing stone particles, making it impossible to treat the waste water at its source.

[00:01:42]>> Regavim, an Israeli advocacy organization focused on land use and enforcement [music] issues, and Green Now, an environmental organization, have petitioned Israel's High Court of Justice.

[00:01:54]They accuse factories operating without permits [music] or environmental safeguards of discharging stone sludge into area C. According to the organizations, the court gave the state 60 days to respond.

[00:02:09]>> We don't want care. If the state of Israel has jurisdiction and has authority and has responsibility, then it should exercise those things for everyone's benefit and to protect the land itself.

[00:02:24]>> Green Now says the pollution can be stopped upstream, but only if stone residue is removed before the industrial wastewater enters the municipal sewage system.

[00:02:35]>> The proper solution is to separate the stone waste at its source in the Hebron area. After undergoing preliminary treatment, the wastewater should be sent to the large Palestinian treatment plant near Yatta, treated there and reused for irrigation. The necessary facility already exists upstream. There is no justification for allowing the wastewater to flow for dozens of kilometers.

[00:02:57]>> Asulai says he would support practical cooperation with the Palestinian authorities, but argues that more than three decades of inaction have left Israel with no choice but to take responsibility.

[00:03:08]>> I would like to work with them. I don't have a problem to work with them, but they really don't want to do what they have to do. Because they are not doing it, the state of Israel, 33 years after they had to to start doing it, uh comes and take responsibility for that. I'm >> For people living along the valley, the effects of the pollution are immediate and impossible to ignore.

[00:03:37]>> They ask very simple question.

[00:03:39]How can we live with that smell every It's It's just, you know, it's sewage that that go through their communities.

[00:03:51]It's crazy. You can you cannot understand it. It's >> The proposed solution combines enforcement against polluting factories, preliminary treatment of industrial waste [music] water, and effective operation of the Yatta treatment plant.

[00:04:04]Until those measures are implemented, the pollution [music] will continue crossing every jurisdiction in its path, while communities throughout the valley continue to bear the consequences. From Judea, Gabriel Colodro reported for The Media Line.

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