Israel's last asbestos landfill runs out in four years. Rockets just broke 17,000 northern roofs.
Asbestos is a fibrous mineral once mixed into cheap roof sheets across rural Israel; banned in 2011, it stays carcinogenic for decades. About 100 million square metres of it still sits on Israeli roofs — mostly on moshavim (the cooperative farming villages of the north) and small industrial sheds. Hezbollah fired about 17,000 projectiles into that same northern belt during the 14-month war, and in January 2025 the Environmental Protection and Health Ministries warned that rocket damage had likely shattered many of those roofs. The Ministry's December 2025 report on the Asbestos Law adds a second cliff: finishing removal will cost 5.3 billion shekels, and Efeh — the country's only hazardous-waste landfill, south of Arad in the Negev desert — has four years of room left.
01The pain
A cement-asbestos roof on a Galilee chicken shed cracked in October 2024 when a Hezbollah rocket landed nearby. The sheet stayed up. The fibres came down. Asbestos is a fibrous mineral once mixed into roof tiles for cheap waterproofing. Israel banned it in 2011 because every fibre inhaled raises the chance of lung and mesothelioma cancer years later.3 Roughly 100 million square metres sits on Israeli roofs, mostly on moshavim (cooperative farming villages of the north) and small industrial sheds.1 That northern belt absorbed 17,000 Hezbollah projectiles in the 14-month war.2
In January 2025 the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Health Ministry issued a joint warning. Rocket damage in the north may have released carcinogenic fibres.2 Their December 2025 implementation report on the Asbestos Law (the 2011 statute that forces removal and licenses the trade) added a second cliff. Finishing removal will cost about 5.3 billion shekels. Efeh, the country's only hazardous-waste landfill, sits south of Arad in the Negev desert. It has four years of room left for the asbestos load.1
By law only a licensed asbestos contractor on the Ministry's registry may touch a damaged sheet, and the registry is small.4 The Western Galilee soil cleanup near the old Eitanit plant runs through 2026.1 Eitanit, a Nahariya factory, spread asbestos dust into the surrounding soil for decades. The disposal cell at Efeh closes around 2029.
Further reading
- 1 Israel National News reporting on the Ministry of Environmental Protection's December 2025 implementation report on the Asbestos Law (5771-2011), covering the cumulative ~1.5 billion shekels already spent, 17.8 million m² of cement asbestos removed since 2011, the western-Galilee mesothelioma cluster around the former Eitanit asbestos-cement plant in Nahariya, the Phase A & B soil cleanup, and the two forward-looking cliffs — the ~5.3-billion-shekel cost to finish removal and the ~four-year remaining capacity at the national hazardous-waste landfill (Efeh): israelnationalnews.com/news/418697
- 2 Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reporting on the joint hazard warning from the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Health that war damage to structures in the north during the 14-month conflict — Hezbollah fired about 17,000 projectiles — may have released carcinogenic asbestos fibres, with a public reporting hotline (*6911) for suspected exposure: jns.org
- 3 Government of Israel (gov.il) — the official Environmental Protection Ministry page on asbestos risk prevention, the binding statutory frame (the Asbestos and Harmful Dust Prevention Law 5771-2011), the licensed-contractor regime, the public registry of contractors authorised to perform removal, the work-permit requirement, and the prohibition on do-it-yourself removal: gov.il/en/pages/asbestos-risk-prevention
- 4 Midrag (Israel's largest tradesperson review aggregator) — operator-facing guidance page on asbestos removal, recording the 50-square-metre statutory threshold above which a licensed contractor is mandatory, the requirement to consult the Ministry's published registry, and the contractor-insurance certificate the property owner must verify before work begins: midrag.co.il/Content/Tip/152
- + Times of Israel reporting on the construction-sector worker shortage in northern Israel after the war, useful as practitioner corroboration that the registry-licensed asbestos-removal trade is operating into a labour pool already squeezed by reservist callup and the foreign-worker freeze: timesofisrael.com
02Who solves this today
Five Ministry-licensed Israeli asbestos-removal contractors whose own product pages explicitly market cement-asbestos roof removal at moshav, agricultural-shed, industrial-warehouse and small-factory scale — checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow: vendors whose homepage marketed only adjacent services (general roof replacement, generic environmental consulting, soil surveying) were dropped. Inclusion is not endorsement.
Listed providers publicly market to the Israeli cement-asbestos roof-removal niche on their own product or service pages — the registry-licensed trade for moshav, agricultural-shed and small-factory roofs. Inclusion is not endorsement. The Ministry of Environmental Protection's full licensed-contractor registry sits on gov.il and lists more contractors than the five above; the registry itself is the regulator's instrument, not a third-party solution provider. Adjacent vendors were considered and excluded: kaseli.co.il (Shlomi Balhayev — licensed contractor, but the public homepage carried only a general "services" listing without a product page concretely naming the moshav-roof / large-shed segment at the date of writing), shemersafety.co.il (a general occupational-safety firm — no asbestos-removal product page), and several regional roofing contractors whose pages marketed roof replacement without a Ministry-licensed asbestos-handling product page. The disposal-side capability — Efeh, the national hazardous-waste landfill operated under the Ministry's permitting regime — is referenced in section 01 as the regulatory bottleneck rather than listed as a third-party solution. The shape that does not yet show up on any homepage above is the wedge in the third TL;DR bullet: a single operator that bundles licensed crew, prefilled permit, fixed price per square metre and a pre-booked landfill slot, sold as one productised invoice to the northern moshav and the small industrial roof. The five listed are real-solver vendors of the underlying trade; the productised, scaled, fixed-price aggregator across the trade has not yet shown up publicly.
Listed companies — manage your entry. If you are one of the providers above and anything here is wrong, missing, or out of date — or you'd rather not be listed — let us know. Removal is processed within 24 hours; corrections within 7 business days. We do not contact listed companies first; we publish what your own public marketing claims and respond when you reach out. Email contact@aikraft.com.
Operators discussing this
Hebrew operator chat about the Israeli licensed-asbestos-removal trade — a small, regulated profession with a public ministry registry — sits mostly inside closed WhatsApp groups of the Builders' Association and members-only ministerial briefings. Where the public surface carries operator-to-operator content, it is the Midrag tradesperson-reviews channel: Israeli property owners and small-business owners reviewing the licensed contractors they hired, the rolling customer-feedback loop the trade actually runs on.
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«לעבודות פינוי אסבסט מעל לשטח של 50 מ"ר חייבים על פי חוק להזמין קבלן מורשה לפינוי אסבסט. את רשימת הקבלנים המורשים תוכלו למצוא באתר לאיכות הסביבה.»
"For asbestos removal work over 50 square metres, by law you must hire a licensed asbestos contractor. The list of licensed contractors is on the Environmental Protection Ministry site."
פינוי אסבסט | טיפים והמלצות לפירוק ופינוי אסבסט · Midrag — Midrag is Israel's largest tradesperson review aggregator; the asbestos-contractor section carries rolling customer reviews on listed licensed contractors. The customer-feedback loop is the recurrence vector: property owners who hired a registry contractor return to post the outcome.
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