Israel Undermines Worldwide Ban on Hazardous Waste Trade

["greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

  GREENPEACE: Israel undermines world wide ban on hazardous
waste trade  FEB 27, 1998,Israel announced during the Basel 
Convention negotiations in Malaysia its intention to import
hazardous  wastes from industrialised countries and become a
major waste  management centre in the region.
   According to the environmental organisations Greenpeace and
Basel  Action Network, Israel has ignored the fundamental Basel
principles of  waste minimisation, reduction of transboundary
movement of hazardous  wastes, and adoption of clean production.

   "By arguing for imports of hazardous wastes from rich
countries,  Israel is projecting itself as a garbage-led
economy," said Kevin  Stairs of Greenpeace International. "Not
only that, the move threatens  to derail a Ban which took the
G-77 nations more than a decade to win."  The proposal that has
drawn criticism from environmental organisations  is Israel's
application to join the ranks of OECD and EU countries in  order
to receive hazardous wastes from them. Currently, a landmark
1995  amendment (known as the Basel Ban) to the Basel Convention
prohibits  the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD
countries like  Israel.
   Israel has an abysmal track record of managing its own waste.
At  least 60,000 tons of hazardous waste of unknown composition
and thought  to have originated from Israel are currently
stockpiled in a sea of  leaking barrels in Israel's Negev desert
dump of Ramat Hovav. The  Israeli authorities have built an
incinerator for this waste and  started the polluting operation
last year.     "Israel is among those countries which have
demonstrated that they  can't handle their own waste; its
amazing that its proposal to import  more hazardous wastes has
not been clearly rejected by the  international community," said
Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network, a  recently launched
international network of NGO's.
   A similar attempt by Israel in 1996 to import hazardous
wastes from  the OECD parties to the Barcelona Convention was
rejected by the  contracting parties. Israel is reported to be
one of the last few  countries that continue the universally
condemned practice of ocean  dumping of toxic sludge in the
Mediterranean sea.

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