Representatives of the Environmental Protection Ministry lashed out at the Finance Ministry on Sunday for proposals in a draft economic arrangements bill that it said would weaken the gatekeepers who protect the environment and public health.

In the bill, set to accompany the 2026 budget, the Treasury says it plans to allow infrastructure building in national parks and nature reserves, to replace the ministry’s environmental experts on planning committees with private consultants, and to reduce the scope of environmental impact surveys, in the hopes this will help speed up Israel’s development and cut costs for developers.

However, the Environmental Protection Ministry says such moves will unfairly tilt the balance between protecting the environment and public health, and construction, in the direction of the latter.

Senior Environmental Protection Ministry official Rani Amir told a press conference on Sunday that the Finance Ministry was treating his ministry “like a punching bag.”

A section of the bill titled “The removal of legal obstacles to infrastructure initiatives” states there should be no need for permission from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority for infrastructure projects in national parks and nature reserves because environmental impact surveys are carried out before plans are approved, and that should suffice.

But the document also goes on to propose limiting the scope of those surveys in ways that environment officials described as “arbitrary.” For example, air quality forecasts would be limited to a radius of 1,500 meters (just under 5,000 feet) of a plan’s outer boundary, even though air pollution can travel further.

Some of the Treasury’s proposals have been recycled from previous years, having failed to make it into the law books because of public opposition.

One of these is to replace the........

© The Times of Israel