WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called for probing the Zionist regime’s burial of hazardous nuclear and chemical waste in the occupied Palestinian territories, Arab48 reported.
During a conference about Climate Change held in Ramallah and attended by a number of foreign ambassadors, Shtayyeh shed light on the dangerous measures by the occupying regime that devastate the Palestinian environment.
He pointed out that the number of cancer patients in the south of the occupied West Bank city of Al-Khalil has sharply increased, linking this to the accumulation of nuclear, chemical and solid waste by the Zionists.
“Burying nuclear, chemical and solid Israeli waste poses danger to the environment and to people’s health,” he stressed.
He suggested that the world should look at Climate Change the same way it is looking at the COVID-19; as a pandemic.
The Zionist regime has uprooted 2.5 million trees since 1967, including 800 ageing olive trees “as part of its war on the environment and as part of its colonial project,” Shtayyeh said.
Palestine’s annual water budget is approximately 800 million cubic meters and the Zionist regime has “stolen” 600 million cubic meters of it, he said, adding the water theft is part of “Israel’s systematic colonialist policies to turn our lands into desert and seize them.”
The Palestinian Authority adopted the Greening Palestine Program 10 years ago and spent $25 million to plant new trees in the West Bank and parts of the besieged Gaza Strip, according to the prime minister.
“It is sad that every tree we planted in the Gaza Strip in the Beit Hanoun area was razed by the occupation forces during their repeated aggressions against the Strip.”
Under international law, the West Bank and East Al-Quds are considered occupied Palestinian territories and all Zionist settlement activities there are illegal.