Jerusalem, 25 February, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection is leading a proposed resolution for a strategic plan to address environmental hazards in the Judea and Samaria region. The program is multi-year, broad, and estimated in the billions, and its main goal – strengthening enforcement and punishment, expanding legal powers, and laying the foundation for a long-term solution to environmental hazards.

The main points of the policy include strengthening enforcement and supervision tools, moving from a reactive policy to a proactive enforcement policy in the field, promoting end-to-end solutions for waste treatment, establishing sorting and recovery infrastructure, expanding air quality monitoring, and collaborating with security agencies and the international community – with the aim of reducing the scope of fires and the pollution resulting from them.

The plan presents for the first time a comprehensive government response to address transboundary pollution – from combining enforcement and legislative tools, through expanding the air monitoring system, to promoting waste treatment infrastructure. The headquarters’ work on the matter indicates a multi-year process with a total scope estimated at 5-6 billion shekels in the long term, along with an initial implementation phase currently being presented as part of the decision-makers’ proposal.

Gil Tanenbaum

See Full Bio