Israel reduces Palestinian water supply to a trickle
Amnesty International yesterday published a damning report on Israel’s discriminatory water policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The report addresses what is one of the most under-reported yet vital issues in the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and displacement; the appropriation of Palestinian resources for Israeli use.
Israel uses far more water per capita than any other country in the region (300 liters a day), but its freshwater resources are limited. Prior to 1967, its water was pumped from Lake Tiberias and the River Jordan, but the occupation of the West Bank gave the Zionist state a goldmine of water reserves. The forcible acquisition of this new territory meant that three large underground aquifers-the Western Aquifer, the Mountain Aquifer and the Eastern Aquifer- fell under Israeli control, and it wasted no time in limiting Palestinian access to them. For over forty years now, and fifteen years after the Oslo Accords, Israel has banned Palestinians from drilling a single aquifer well in the West Bank.
Israel also made sure to assert permanent control on the land above these three aquifers; the Eastern Aquifer lies in the Jordan Valley, which has been virtually annexed by Israel and in which Palestinian development is barred. The Mountain Aquifer, the largest in Palestine, runs under the area on which the huge Ariel settlement is constructed. As part of his ‘convergence’ plan, Ehud Olmert sought to extend Israel’s official borders around Ariel, which lies deep in the north central West Bank. Finally, the Western Aquifer lies to the west of the apartheid wall; that area is also virtually annexed to Israel now.
To that end, the consumption of water by Palestinians in the West Bank is at about 70 liters a day per capita, which is less than the 100 liters per day mandated by the World Health Organization as the minimum amount for healthy living. Over 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank are not connected to the water grid, and have to buy their water from tankers. The disparity is alarming-frequently, Israeli settlements in the West Bank-illegal under international law- sit with their sprinklers, lush lawns and full swimming pools amidst parched Palestinian farmland. In fact, Amnesty charges that the illegal settlers use more water than the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank. Farmers in what the Oslo Accords deemed ‘Area C’, are not even allowed to help themselves. Palestinian construction in these areas is banned by the Israeli military authorities; this extends even to water cisterns, which are frequently destroyed by the Israeli army as this farmer experienced.
In Gaza, the situation is expectedly worse. The besieged strip sits atop the Coastal Aquifer, but up 90-95% of its water is unfit for human consumption. Additionally, the contamination levels in Gaza’s drinking water are dangerously high. The siege, which is now in its third year, has meant that Palestinian in Gaza have been unable to import the urgently needed materials needed to improve the water infrastructure in the territory. Two years ago a huge sewage collection plant in northern Gaza burst and flooded a large area, completely burying one village and killing several people.
Back in the West Bank, the water that Palestinians do receive is the share given to them by Israel of their own resources (Israel keeps 80% of the output of the Mountain Aquifer for itself, for example). However, receive is probably the wrong term; Palestinians pay Israel for the right to use their own water. And even though Israelis (particularly the settlers) use four times as much (Palestinian) water as Palestinians, the cost to Palestinians is four times as much as it is to Israelis.
Undoubtedly, the root cause of this oppression is the Israeli occupation. However, the PLO and Palestinian Authority deserve a lot of criticism for their handling of this issue. The Oslo Accords not only deemed large parts of the West Bank (particularly the land on top of the aquifers) as ‘Area C’ and under full Israeli control, but they also featured an agreement on how much of their own water Israel was to supply (sell) to the Palestinians. Defenders of Oslo may point out that the treaty and the terms it stipulated were only meant to last five years until independence, but the fact that the PLO failed to insert any guarantee mechanisms in the agreement (a basic element of international pacts) has led to the situation we have today, 15 years on. Engaging Israel on its own terms has left the PA and its institutions paralyzed on almost every issue concerning the humanitarian and political rights of Palestinians, including the disgraceful appropriation of Palestinian water sources.
