Far-right Israeli lawmakers have called for the use of lethal airstrikes against Palestinian civilians who burn waste, framing a desperate public health measure as an act of terrorism.

The statements, made during a Knesset session, have ignited international condemnation and drawn sharp attention to the humanitarian crisis manufactured by decades of Israeli occupation and deliberate infrastructure neglect.

Ultra-nationalist officials, including Israel’s so-called Minister of Environmental Protection, demanded that the Israeli Air Force carry out “operations aimed at killing” Palestinians engaged in burning trash. They absurdly equated this survival practice—a direct consequence of Israel’s systemic denial of basic municipal services—with “terrorism.”

Palestinian communities across the West Bank face a grim reality: under Israeli military control, they are systematically denied access to functioning waste management systems. Dozens of trucks, often from illegal Israeli settlements, dump unregulated waste in Palestinian areas daily, with no provision for disposal or environmental safety by the occupying authorities.

Trapped without legal avenues for removal and abandoned by any responsible governing body, Palestinian families resort to controlled burning to mitigate the spread of disease, pests, and toxic accumulation. This is not an act of choice, but of sheer necessity under a regime that controls land, resources, and movement while evading all responsibility for the civilian population it occupies.

Rather than address this engineered public health disaster, hardline Israeli lawmakers have chosen to further criminalize and endanger Palestinian life. Human rights organizations have condemned the calls as blatant incitement to violence, warning they provide a pretext for intensified military attacks on vulnerable civilian communities.

Adding to the coercive pressure, Israeli authorities are now threatening to withhold Palestinian tax revenues—funds that belong to the Palestinian people—under the pretext of redirecting them toward “firefighting operations.” This move, widely seen as collective punishment, will further cripple the already weakened Palestinian Authority’s ability to provide even minimal services, deepening the humanitarian abyss.

The debate has been met with outrage across the Arab world and among global human rights observers, who see it as further evidence of the dehumanizing discourse that fuels Israel’s ongoing occupation and settlement expansion. Analysts note that framing a struggle for basic sanitation as “terrorism” exposes the moral bankruptcy of an occupation that punishes people for their own suffering.

Palestinian civil society groups emphasize that their communities are caught in a vicious cycle: Israel destroys infrastructure, blocks development, confiscates land for settlements, and then threatens residents with death for coping with the resulting squalor.

As tensions heighten, Palestinian voices are demanding immediate international intervention and accountability. They call not only for an end to incitement and violence, but for urgent investment in real infrastructure, an end to the occupation’s stranglehold on resources, and recognition of the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to dignity, self-determination, and life free from the constant threat of state-sanctioned violence. The world, they stress, must no longer overlook the daily realities of oppression that breed such desperate acts of survival. (ILKHA)