Is Israel violating international laws and causing a potential health crisis with its dumping of untreated sewage in the Mediterranean? Gihan Shahine gauges reactions in Rafah, the Egyptian border town most affected by the pollution As the world remains completely engrossed in news of a potential war on Iraq, crimes against the environment may not have as strong a chance of grabbing the headlines. The goings- on near the Egyptian-Israeli border at Rafah are a case in point. Environmentalists say that Israel has been ruining the ecosystem of the Egyptian Mediterranean coastline and jeopardising public health since 1995. Despite that fact, no one, on the official or international level, has taken action to stop it -- until now. This week, a committee from the Ministry of Environment provided conclusive proof that the Egyptian border town of Rafah has been afflicted with water pollution caused by Israeli dumping of untreated sewage in the Mediterranean, as well as the open sewage dumps Israel established at Tal Al-Sultan in occupied Rafah. Meanwhile, the non-governmental Organisation for Environmental Protection (OEP) in Egypt's Rafah has filed a lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, demanding the payment of a LE60 million fine as compensation for the losses and health hazards the pollution has caused in the area. Previous analysis by the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) revealed that Rafah's sea-water contained a high percentage of pollutants -- mainly ammonia and hydrogen sulfide -- far above the safety levels defined by health ministerial decree 64/1996. The report also found that at least 400 metres of Rafah's coastline are unfit for fishing and bathing. More ominous, perhaps, were the 75 samples taken from the town's subterranean potable water reservoirs located near the border, which were found to be so polluted as to be unfit for drinking, according to reports by the Water Resources Institute in Rafah. The Environment Ministry committee was assigned the case by Environment Minister Mamdouh Riyad after a recent visit to Rafah catalysed by a vehement press campaign orchestrated by opposition newspaper Al-Wafd. The campaign to uncover "Israeli crimes against Egypt's Rafah" also drew an angry response from Parliament's foreign affairs committee, which requested urgent reports on the matter from the ministries of environment, foreign affairs, and health. North Sinai Governor Ahmed Abdel- Hamid had already sent reports about "Israel's uncivilised acts that jeopardise public health, biodiversity and the ecosystem of the town of Rafah" to the concerned ministries and parliament. Abdel-Hamid had also sent copies of Rafah residents' complaints regarding the obnoxious smell and the droves of mosquitoes that have deluged the area as a result. "It's a real dilemma," said Mona Abdel- Qader, head of the OAP office in Rafah. Abdel-Qader is also one of the 100,000 inhabitants of the five neighbourhoods that have been affected by the Israeli pollution. "Every now and then, an obnoxious smell overwhelms the area. The horrible odour even makes us vomit sometimes, and brings in droves of mosquitoes and flies, especially in summer time," Abdel-Qader told Al- Ahram Weekly. "All our attempts to spray the town with pesticides have not worked." The beautiful beaches of Rafah are no longer the outlet they once were for the town's inhabitants. "It's disgusting," Abdel- Qader said. "When the tide flows in our direction, which happens for an average 4-6 hours a day, we see raw sewage and waste floating in the sea, and the once-startlingly blue Mediterranean immediately turns brown. It's a real crisis." The crisis actually dates back to 1993 when Israel started building the Gosh Qatif settlements in the Gaza strip, choosing the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tal Al-Sultan in Rafah for the Israeli Rafah Yam compound. Instead of using a sanitary sewage system, Israeli settlers dump a daily average of 140-170 cubic metres of untreated sewage directly into the sea through three big pipes. The Israelis, who were also responsible for building the neighbourhood's infrastructure by virtue of their imposed sovereignty over the area, established an open lagoon for Tal Al- Sultan's half million Palestinian inhabitants to dump their sewage into, before pipes carry that waste directly to the sea. The open dump lies almost 130 metres east of Egyptian-Israeli border sign 1. "This open dump violates all international environmental laws and conventions in many respects," OEP chairman Abdallah El-Heggawi said. The sewage, he explained, is not treated and is pumped through pipes located directly on the sandy beach, only two metres away from the water. "According to the Barcelona Convention, which Israel has signed, sewage should be treated and pumped at a minimum depth of 70 metres into the sea," El- Heggawi told the Weekly. "The open dump was also built in the north, with prevailing winds thus blowing the obnoxious smell southwards into the neighbourhoods --- according to international codes, such dumps should be built east-southward of any town." Matters have recently gone from bad to worse now that the open dump is routinely bombarded by Israeli forces fighting the Palestinian Intifada. The sewage has also been seeping into the sand dunes on the Egyptian border. "Rafah has two sources of drinking water: wells that are 60-80 metres deep within an area of sand stones which is far away and thus not affected by the pollution; and other wells that are 28-50 metres deep within the sand dunes that are between one-half and two kilometres away from the Tal Al- Sultan sewage dump," said Mohamed Shehata, a geologist at the Rafah local council. "It is, of course, the latter, which provides the town with 30 per cent of its drinking and irrigation water resources, that have been affected." Shehata said analysis conducted at the Local Council's Water Institute found bacteria and viruses in some of the water that was sampled. According to Shehata, drinking the water would cause "many intestinal diseases, kidney failure and, perhaps even cancer". Shehata says the situation is "a violation of the basic human right to a safe and clean environment". Epidemics can now easily spread to Egypt via the polluted sea and the potable water, Shehata said, adding that some inhabitants had already reported complaints of skin infections resulting from bathing in the sea, or sore eyes resulting from the obnoxious smell. Both claims, however, were denied by the town's health officials. "Fishermen sometimes find human hair inside fish," El-Heggawi also told the Weekly. "It is true that fishing is prohibited in the area near the border, but we have seen large groups of fish gather near the polluted pipe area to munch on the sewage and waste. Who knows, then, whether the fish we eat is polluted or not?" The public's anger has failed to solve the problem so far. For more than five years, the ministries of environment and foreign affairs have remained silent on the many complaints sent by Governor Abdel-Hamid and the OAP. And it still remains highly questionable whether any official action will be taken to stop the Israeli violations this time. Officials at the governorate told the Weekly that "the problem is now entirely in the hands of the minister of environment," who, in turn, refused to comment on the subject. Riyad told the Weekly that he had already submitted the committee's report on the problem, and "that it is now entirely in the hands of the Foreign Ministry". Officials at the Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said they are "still following up on the matter". "Every time the issue comes to the fore, attracting public attention, official committees come to investigate and provide prove of the pollution, but then, at the end of the day, nothing happens," scoffed an inhabitant, who asked to remain anonymous. El-Heggawi said the problem was proving Israel's responsibility for the crime. The Israelis, said El-Heggawi, tend to shift the blame onto the Palestinians. That's what Israeli environmentalists told El-Heggawi at a conference organised by ECOPEACE, an international organisation to which Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel belong. El-Heggawi said that Jordan had expressed similar complaints regarding Israel dumping eight million cubic metres of sewage into the Gulf of Aqaba. El-Heggawi claimed that he would prove Israel's responsibility via the lawsuit the OAP has filed with the Egyptian judiciary. He then plans to present the verdict to international organisations in an attempt to force an intervention to stop the Israeli violations. El- Heggawi says he has all the photos, documents and witnesses needed for the task. "The Israeli pipes can easily be seen from the borders and no further proof is even needed," El-Heggawi said. Even if part of the pollution comes from the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tal Al-Sultan, he argued, it is common knowledge that Palestinians have no authority to build any infrastructure, or even do their normal daily chores, under Israeli occupation. "Any construction work is within Israeli sovereignty," El-Heggawi said. Ironically, the tide moves eastward along the Mediterranean, which means that the Israelis themselves are also afflicted by 80 per cent of the sewage and pollution. "How can Israel claim to be civilised when it does such horrible things in its own neighbourhoods?" El-Heggawi wondered. "It is understandable though that they would pollute our environment, since they massacre Palestinian children in cold blood." Some residents think the dumping of sewage is part of an Israeli conspiracy to force Rafah's residents away from their homes in disgust. "No matter how much harm the Israelis do us," one inhabitant told the Weekly, "we will never leave our homes and go. Never, ever, ever."
