The fires are an offshoot of a vast, robust, informal sector that recycles and refurbishes e-waste and electronics imported from Israel, yet they have had an outsized impact on Palestinian villages and nearby Israeli towns.

I lived in the town of Beit Awwa in the southern West Bank for almost a month across seven visits between November 2017 and April 2019. I photographed the burns, the Palestinians affected by them, and the broader e-waste sector that has become an unlikely boon for thousands of Palestinians struggling economically amid the Israeli occupation.

On my first trip, I joined Dr. Yaakov Garb, an environmental scientist from Israel’s Ben Gurion University, during one of his many visits to the area . Dr. Garb has studied the sector extensively and developed close relationships with the community. He and a coalition of Israelis and Palestinians were in the midst of facilitating an ambitious grass-roots project to stop the burns and sustainably reform the sector.