Peace and Pollution: An Examination of Palestinian—Israeli Trans-Boundary Hazardous Waste Management 20 Years after the Oslo Peace Accords

Abstract

As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed to jointly manage issues of environmental concern according to internationally recognised standards. The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively evaluate the outcomes of the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo environmental peace agreements regarding trans-boundary hazardous waste management. Hazardous waste is an area of particular importance given the potential for inefficient management to impact on public health and shared ecological resources. Although the environmental negotiations that took place within the framework of the Oslo Accords can be seen as a significant milestone for environmental cooperation, many objectives were never achieved. Ultimately, both parties were left with suboptimal trans-boundary management, in practice, because broader political disputes derailed cooperation in many technical spheres. This outcome can be attributed to four main factors: Israeli security concerns, territorial disputes, logistical ambiguities and Palestinian institutional constraints. The outcomes of the environmental agreements challenge neo-functionalist approaches to peacebuilding at the interstate level. Given the risks environmental concerns pose to both sides, new models are needed that disentangle the management of immediately shared environmental challenges from the ongoing conflict.

Security Aspects of Waste Disposal

“…Even in developed countries, there is a question of security risks of solid waste dumps on the urban areas in their vicinity (Fazzo et al 2017). Some of the countries that have heavy industry close to densely populated areas, such as Israel, tend to give more focus on regulation that provides complying with the higher waste management standards, nevertheless due to geographical and political problems, wider cooperation is often impossible (Alleson, Levin, Brenner & Al Hmaidi, 2013).…”

“…Netherlands, for example, face the problem of wastewater disposal, amid the climate changes effects and increasing risk of floods (Markus, & Savini, 2016). The example of situation on Palestinian-Israeli border shows the challenges of wastewater disposal as a major security issue, because water resources have long been in the focus of security strategists, but the disposal and treatment of wastewater hasn't (Alleson, Levin, Brenner & Al Hmaidi, 2013;Fischhendler, Katz & Feitelson, 2016). This issue is important also in the countries prone to natural disasters like earthquakes such are New Zealand, California in the US, British Columbia in Canada, etc.…”

“…But even those programs are influenced by different policies of waste categorizations, as they are in both countries inherited form Soviet times and EU proposes new classification, policies and procedures (Happ & Bruns, 2017). Waste management (Alleson, Levin, Brenner & Al Hmaidi, 2013) initiatives exist in conflict prone regions, but the implementation of those initiatives, especially in the long-term basis remains one of the, currently, often unsolvable problems.…”