[News] Israel's hydro-apartheid keeps West Bank thirsty

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israels-hydro-apartheid-keeps-west-bank-thirsty 



  Israel's hydro-apartheid keeps West Bank thirsty

Charlotte Silver 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/charlotte-silver> - 1 August 2016

Water shortages are not new for Palestinians. Whether in the occupied 
Gaza Strip or the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the supply of 
water <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/water> flowing into 
Palestinian homes is strictly capped or obstructed by Israel.

As temperatures climb during the summer, taps run dry. Clemens 
Messerschmid 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/clemens-messerschmid>, a German 
hydrologist who has worked with Palestinians on their water supply for 
two decades, calls the situation “hydro-apartheid.”

This year, Israeli journalist Amira Hass published data 
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.726132> proving that the Israeli 
Water Authority had reduced the amount of water delivered to West Bank 
villages.

In some places, the supply was slashed by half. Her records contradict 
official denials that water supplies to Palestinian cities and villages 
are cut during the summer, even though that too is not new.

Cities and small villages have gone as long as 40 days 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-cuts-water-supplies-west-bank-ramadan-160614205022059.html> 
without running water this summer, forcing those who can afford it to 
haul in water tanks.

When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 it also seized control over 
the West Bank Mountain Aquifer, the territory’s principal natural water 
reserve.

The Oslo accords <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-accords> of 
the early 1990s gave Israel 80 percent of the aquifer’s reserves 
<http://www.btselem.org/water/oslo_accords>. Palestinians were supposed 
to get the remaining 20 percent, but in recent years they have been able 
to access only 14 percent <http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.726132> 
as a result of Israeli restrictions on their drilling.

To fulfill the population’s minimum needs, the Palestinian Authority is 
forced to buy the rest of the water from Israel. But even then, it’s not 
enough.

Israel is only willing to sell a limited amount of water to 
Palestinians. As a consequence, Palestinians use far less water than 
Israelis, and a full third less 
<http://www.btselem.org/water/discrimination_in_water_supply> than the 
World Health Organization’s recommendation of 100 liters per person per 
day for domestic use, hospitals, schools and other institutions.

The Electronic Intifada spoke with Clemens Messerschmid, who has been 
working in the water sector throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip 
since 1997, about the engineered water scarcity for Palestinians in the 
West Bank.

*Charlotte Silver:* Is scarcity of water in the area driving the water 
crisis in the West Bank? Or is the scarcity engineered?

*Clemens Messerschmid:* Of course there is no water scarcity in the West 
Bank. What we suffer from is induced scarcity – it’s called the 
occupation. This is the regime imposed on Palestinians immediately after 
the war in June 1967.

Israel rules through military orders, which have the direct and intended 
result of keeping Palestinians short on water. It is not an ongoing 
gradual dispossession as with land and settlements, but was done in one 
sweep by Military Order No. 92, in August 1967.

The West Bank possesses ample groundwater. There is high rainfall in 
Salfit <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/salfit>, in the northern 
West Bank, now known for especially hard water cuts.

The West Bank is blessed with a treasure of groundwater. But this is 
also its curse, because Israel targeted this immediately after taking 
control.

What we need is simple: groundwater wells to access this treasure. But 
Israel’s Military Order No. 158 strictly forbids drilling or any other 
water works, including springs, pipes, networks, pumping stations, 
irrigation pools, water reservoirs, simple rainwater harvesting 
cisterns, which collect the rain falling on one’s roof.

Everything is forbidden or rather not “permitted” by the Civil 
Administration, Israel’s occupation regime. Even repair and maintenance 
of wells requires military permits. And we simply don’t get them.

It is a simple case of hydro-apartheid – far beyond any regime in 
history that I am aware of.

*CS:* Israel has increased the amount of water it sells Palestinians, 
but it is still not enough to prevent villages from running dry. Putting 
aside the fact that Israel’s control over the aquifer’s resources is 
very problematic, why won’t Israel sell the Palestinians enough water?

*CM:* Israel first of all has drastically /reduced/ the amount of water 
available to Palestinians. It has prevented all access to the Jordan 
River <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan-river>, which is now 
literally pumped dry at Lake Tiberias.

Then, Israel imposes a quota on the number of wells and routinely denies 
permits for much-needed repair of old wells from the Jordanian days – 
Jordan administered the West Bank from 1948 until the Israeli occupation 
– especially agricultural wells. That means the number of wells is 
constantly shrinking. We have fewer than in 1967.

Now, the only thing that has increased is the dependency on buying water 
from the expropriators, Israel and Mekorot 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mekorot>, Israel’s national water 
company.

This is reported over and over in the western press, because it is the 
point Israel stresses: ‘See how benevolent we are?’

So, yes, since Oslo, purchases from Mekorot have grown steadily. 
Ramallah now receives 100 percent of its water from Mekorot. Not a drop 
comes from a single well field we have.

The supply of villages by Israel was not done as a favor. It was 
initiated in 1980 by Ariel Sharon, then agriculture minister, when rapid 
settlement growth was starting. The water supply was “integrated,” in 
order to make the occupation irreversible.

What is important here is the structural apartheid, cemented and cast in 
iron in these pipes. A small settlement is supplied via large 
transmission pipes from which smaller pipes split off to go towards 
Palestinian areas.

Israel is very happy with Oslo, because now Palestinians are 
“responsible” for supply. Responsible but without a shred of sovereignty 
over resources.

The current so-called water crisis is not a crisis at all. A crisis is a 
sudden change, a new turn or a turning point in development. The 
undersupply of Palestinians is desired, planned and carefully executed. 
The “summer water crisis” is the most reliable feature of the 
Palestinian water calendar. And the amount of annual rain, or drought, 
has no bearing whatsoever on the occurrence and scale of that “crisis.”

I should stress that however routinely this occurs, in each and every 
single case, it is a conscious decision by some bureaucrat or office in 
Israel or the Civil Administration. Someone has to go to the field and 
turn down the valve at the split off to the Palestinian village. This, 
like every summer, was done in early June. Hence – water crisis in the 
West Bank.

*CS:* What factors may be contributing to the worsening water cuts this 
year?

*CM:* It seems settler demand rose drastically since last year. The 
Israeli Water Authority found 20 to 40 percent higher demand, which is 
quite remarkable.

Alexander Kushnir, the Water Authority’s director general, attributes 
this to expansion of settler irrigation in the mountains of the northern 
West Bank settlements, around Salfit and Nablus.

*CS:* How is it that people in present-day Israel are reportedly 
enjoying a surplus of water 
<http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-desalination-plants-ensure-water-supply-until-2025-1001140724> 
since the country has started using desalination, while the people under 
occupation in the West Bank are left with so little? Even Israeli 
settlers have reportedly experienced water cuts.

*CM:* It’s true that Israel declared for the first time a few years ago 
that it had a surplus water economy and is keen to sell more water to 
its neighbors 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-historic-israel-jordan-water-deal-leaves-palestinians-high-and-dry/13139>, 
from whom it expropriated water in the first place.

Palestinians are already buying water Israel stole, but as noted, not 
reliably or at sufficient rates.

Frankly, I don’t know. Why this special, elevated and aggravated desire 
of Israel not even to /sell/ enough water to the West Bank?

In some areas, water is actively used as a weapon for ethnic cleansing, 
like in the Jordan Valley 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan-valley>. Agriculture was 
always targeted from day one of the occupation.

But this logic does not apply to the densely populated Palestinian towns 
and cities in so-called Area A of the West Bank, that are still 
struggling. After 20 years, this still leaves me puzzled.

Another element is important to understand: Israel needs to constantly 
teach Palestinians a lesson. Any water procurement, any drop delivered 
should be understood as a generous favor, as an act of mercy, not as a 
right.

Israel has augmented water sales to the West Bank from 25 million cubic 
meters per year in 1995 to around 60 mcm/year now. Why does it not sell 
much more? It certainly could afford it waterwise – it has a gigantic 
surplus.

One of the material issues I can detect is the issue of price, and 
therefore meaning of water.

Israel wants to eventually get the highest price for desalinated water 
it sells to Palestinians. While we are only speaking about a few hundred 
million shekels a year [a few tens of millions of dollars] – which is 
not a lot for Israel – Israel wants to end the debate once and for all 
over Palestinian water rights.

Israel demands nothing short of a full surrender: Palestinians should 
agree that the water under their feet does not belong to them, but 
forever to the occupier.

By demanding full prices for desalinated water, Palestinians would admit 
and agree to a new formula.

A word on the Gaza Strip – unlike the West Bank, Gaza has no physical 
possibility of access to water. The confined and densely populated Strip 
can never supply itself. Yet, Gaza does not get such water deliveries 
from Israel. Only recently did Israel start selling to Gaza the five 
million cubic meters per year agreed in Oslo. A tiny cosmetic increase 
has been enacted.

In a way you could interpret this differential treatment between Gaza 
and the West Bank as an Israeli admission of a certain degree of 
hydrological dependence.

Israel receives the bulk of its water from the territories conquered in 
1967, including Syria’s Golan Heights, but not a drop from Gaza.

Waterwise, Gaza has no resource to offer Israel. This is the same as 
with the main resource: land. Hence a very different approach to Gaza 
right from the start in 1967. Israel does not depend on Gaza in any 
material form. Ever since Oslo, Israel has demanded Gaza supply itself 
by its own means, such as through seawater desalination.

*CS:* How have donor countries acted in all this? Have they defended 
global minimal water standards or have they affirmed and bolstered 
Israel’s control over the water resources in the occupied West Bank?

*CM:* Unfortunately the latter. When Oslo started, we all were under the 
illusion that a phase of development would start. Wells that were 
forbidden to be drilled for 28 years would finally be put in place.

Soon, we learned that Israel in fact was never willing to give “permits 
… for expanding agriculture or industry, which may compete with the 
State of Israel,” as then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yitzhak-rabin> said in 1986.

What was needed then and now – and everybody knew it – was political 
pressure to extract the minimum well-drilling permits guaranteed under 
Palestinian-Israeli accords. This pressure never came. Never did the EU 
or my German government issue even a public statement in which it 
“deplores” or “regrets” the obstructions in the water sector. This is a 
true scandal.

But even worse, what was our Western answer to this? All donor-funded 
projects actually abandoned the vital branch of well drilling. The last 
German funded well was drilled in 1999.

As for the current so-called water crisis, we as donors 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/donor-aid> are now busy generously 
funding anachronistic water tankering in the cut-off Palestinian towns 
and cities – adapting to and stabilizing the status quo of occupation 
and water apartheid.


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