Toxic Occupation: Leveraging the Basel Convention in Palestine

Reports by UN-affiliated institutions, human rights organizations, academic researchers, and individual community members, as well as Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority (EQA), point to the continuing transfer to the West Bank of hazardous wastes from inside Israel, and by illegal Israeli sett...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Palestine studies 2018-01, Vol.47 (2 (186)), p.28-43
Main Authors: ABDEL-QADER, SELMA, ROBERTS-DAVIS, TANYA LEE
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Arab Israeli relations
Binding
Civil society
Colonialism
Conventions
Environmental cleanup
Environmental justice
Geneva Conventions
Hazardous wastes
Human rights
Land settlement
Multilateralism
Perpetrators
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Summary:Reports by UN-affiliated institutions, human rights organizations, academic researchers, and individual community members, as well as Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority (EQA), point to the continuing transfer to the West Bank of hazardous wastes from inside Israel, and by illegal Israeli settlement industries operating in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Such transfers occur in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and of binding multilateral environmental agreements such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, to which both Israel and Palestine are party. This article argues that despite inherent limitations, there are opportunities for leveraging the Basel Convention to hold accountable perpetrators, given the severe environmental, health, and human rights consequences of the uncontrolled movement and disposal of waste on the Palestinian population in the oPt. To date, such opportunities have remained largely unexplored both in academia and by broader sectors of civil society.
ISSN:0377-919X
1533-8614
DOI:10.1525/jps.2018.47.2.28