"Every day," said Afif tiredly, "someone dumps more rubbish here. Day and night the trucks come."
Just below Afif's home in Dahiyat a-Salam neighbourhood in northeast Jerusalem an illegal rubbish dump - larger than a football field and several metres high - is growing, thanks to criminals who have moved in to exploit an opportunity afforded by recent house demolition orders.
The criminals make money by letting companies dump their waste here and the locals can do little to stop them. "Every day it's a war," Afif said. "I tried to close the road [leading to the site]. But they just reopened it."
"The dumping started in 2007, after [the municipality] issued [demolition] orders against houses on the site," said Afif. Five houses were issued orders. This started a free-for-all on the location, with the criminals quickly moving in, realising the chance to make money by dumping illegally, rather than at the more expensive official sites.
 Photo: Shabtai Gold/IRIN  |
| A sea of rubbish threatens to swallow up this house |
Mahmoud, another resident, said he approached the dumpers once.
"I told them to stop, but they told me to go away," he told IRIN, adding: "I knew they'd be violent and so I left them alone.”
Mahmoud said the dumpers tend to be local Palestinians from East Jerusalem, in some cases working for companies inside Israel. Much of the waste sent to the site seemed to originate from Israel.
Karim Jubran, a fieldworker with B'tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, said he only narrowly escaped a beating while trying to conduct an investigation a few months back.
After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 it annexed the territory to "unite" the city. Afif's family and most other Palestinians who were there received Israeli ID cards, entitling them to all state services.
However, repeated complaints to the Jerusalem Municipality to crack down on the criminals led to nothing, residents said.
In the meantime, the rubbish dump continues to grow, emitting a terrible stench: "There's industrial waste and everything you can think of - even medical waste," said Mahmoud, worried about the health impact on the neighbourhood, with its hundreds of residents.
 Photo: Shabtai Gold/IRIN |
| Bedouin children, covered in dirty water from an open sewer, play in the rubbish |
"When they want to take notice, they take notice, otherwise they turn a blind eye," Afif said, noting that the municipality and the police come in regularly to demolish houses but so far have done nothing to crack down on the illegal site.
The trucks, residents said, bring in the garbage along the main road. At the start of the road sits a heavily guarded Israeli military checkpoint.
"The only way for them to bring in the garbage is through here," said B'tselem’s Jubran, pointing at the manned roadblock. He, like others, wondered why the authorities did not at least use the checkpoint to help fight the threat to the environment.
Next to the checkpoint, a sign in Hebrew from the Ministry of the Environment warns that it is illegal to transport waste into the area - a sign the illegal fly-tippers ignore.
Action planned
Gidi Schmerling from the Jerusalem Municipality, in a written statement to IRIN, said his office had already contacted the security forces to "coordinate action against the rubbish dumpers".
"In addition, the environmental protection department at the municipality is acting to handle the illegal dump site," and recycle building materials dumped at the site.
He added that in the next few weeks, Jerusalem would embark on a new project to clean up existing illegal sites and crack down on the criminals responsible for them.
For B'tselem, the case of Dahiyat a-Salam "illustrates the municipality's grave, ongoing neglect of neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem".
"The neglect appears in every area of municipality responsibility: education, refuse collection, water supply, development, and building permits," the rights group said.
 Photo: Shabtai Gold/IRIN |
| Basma's destroyed house in front of her new one which sits under a mountain of garbage |
Basma, a middle-aged woman, had her house demolished on 10 June by the Israeli authorities for lacking a proper permit.
Her family now lives in a small hut built by activists from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, she said. "I am worried they will destroy this house as well."
Residing at the bottom of the rubbish dump on a hillside, her family suffered more than most.
"The smell, dust and dirt are terrible, but we have nowhere else to live," Basma said, adding: "They ran out of room near my house, so they dump further down the road."
There, a small group of Bedouin children, covered in dirty water from an open sewer, were playing in the rubbish.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
