[News] How Israel Uses Palestinian Water as a Weapon of War

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/24/how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war/ 



  How Israel Uses Water as a Weapon of War

by Ramzy Baroud <http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/> - 
June 24, 2016


Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or 
have had their water supply reduced almost by half.

This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since 
Israel’s national water company, “Mekorot”, decided to cut off – or 
significantly reduce – its water supply to Jenin, Salfit and many 
villages around Nablus, among other regions.

Israel has been ‘waging a water war’ against Palestinians, according to 
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. The irony is that 
the water provided by “Mekorot” is actually Palestinian water, usurped 
from West Bank aquifers. While Israelis, including illegal West Bank 
settlements, use the vast majority of it, Palestinians are sold their 
own water back at high prices.

By shutting down the water supply at a time that Israeli officials are 
planning to export essentially Palestinian water, Israel is once more 
utilizing water as a form of collective punishment.

This is hardly new. I still remember the trepidation in my parents’ 
voices whenever they feared that the water supply was reaching a 
dangerously low level. It was almost a daily discussion at home.

Whenever clashes erupted between stone-throwing children and Israeli 
occupation forces on the outskirts of the refugee camp, we always, 
instinctively, rushed to fill up the few water buckets and bottles we 
had scattered around the house.

This was the case during the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, 
which erupted in 1987 throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Whenever clashes erupted, one of the initial actions carried out by the 
Israeli Civil Administration – a less ominous title for the offices of 
the Israeli occupation army – was to collectively punish the whole 
population of whichever refugee camp rose up in rebellion.

The steps the Israeli army took became redundant, although grew more 
vengeful with time: a strict military curfew (meaning the shutting down 
of the entire area and the confinement of all residents to their homes 
under the threat of death); cutting off electricity and shutting off the 
water supply.

Of course, these steps were taken only in the first stage of the 
collective punishment, which lasted for days or weeks, sometimes even 
months, pushing some refugee camps to the point of starvation.

Since there was little the refugees could do to challenge the authority 
of a well-equipped army, they invested whatever meager resources or time 
that they had to plot their survival.

Thus, the obsession over water, because once the water supply ran out, 
there was nothing to be done; except, of course, that of Salat 
Al-Istisqa or the ‘Prayer for Rain’ that devout Muslims invoke during 
times of drought. The elders in the camp insist that it actually works, 
and reference miraculous stories from the past where this special prayer 
even yielded results during summer time, when rain was least expected.

In fact, more Palestinians have been conducting their prayer for rain 
since 1967 than at any other time. In that year, almost exactly 49 years 
ago, Israel occupied the two remaining regions of historic Palestine: 
the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. And 
throughout those years, Israel has resorted to a protracted policy of 
collective punishment: limiting all kinds of freedom, and using the 
denial of water as a weapon.

Indeed, water was used as a weapon to subdue rebelling Palestinians 
during many stages of their struggle. In fact, this history goes back to 
the war of 1948, when Zionist militias cut off the water supply to 
scores of Palestinian villages around Jerusalem to facilitate the ethnic 
cleansing of that region.

During the Nakba (or Catastrophe) of 1948, whenever a village or a town 
was conquered, the militias would immediately demolish its wells to 
prevent the inhabitants from returning. Illegal Jewish settlers still 
utilize this tactic to this day.

The Israeli military, too, continued to use this strategy, most notably 
in the first and second uprisings. In the Second Intifada, Israeli 
airplanes shelled the water supply of whichever village or refugee camp 
they planned to invade and subdue. During the Jenin Refugee Camp 
invasion and massacre of April 2002, the water supply for the camp was 
blown up before the soldiers moved into the camp from all directions, 
killing and wounding hundreds.

Gaza remains the most extreme example of water-related collective 
punishment, to date. Not only the water supply is targeted during war 
but electric generators, which are used to purify the water, are often 
blown up from the sky. And until the decade-long siege is over, there is 
little hope to permanently repair either of these.

It is now common knowledge that the Oslo Accord was a political disaster 
for Palestinians; less known, however, is how Oslo facilitated the 
ongoing inequality under way in the West Bank.

The so-called Oslo II, or the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement of 
1995, made Gaza a separate water sector from the West Bank, thus leaving 
the Strip to develop its own water sources located within its 
boundaries. With the siege and recurring wars, Gaza’s aquifers produce 
anywhere between 5-10 percent of ‘drinking-quality water.’ According to 
ANERA, 90 percent of Gaza water (is) unfit for human consumption.’

Therefore, most Gazans subsist on sewage-polluted or untreated water. 
But the West Bank should – at least theoretically – enjoy greater access 
to water than Gaza. Yet, this is hardly the case.

The West Bank’s largest water source is the Mountain Aquifer, which 
includes several basins: Northern, Western and Eastern. West Bankers’ 
access to these basins is restricted by Israel, which also denies them 
access to water from the Jordan River and to the Coastal Aquifer. Oslo 
II, which was meant to be a temporary arrangement until a final status 
negotiations are concluded, enshrined the existing inequality by giving 
Palestinians less than a fifth of the amount of water enjoyed by Israel.

But even that prejudicial agreement has not been respected, partly 
because a joint committee to resolve water issues gives Israel veto 
power over Palestinian demands. Practically, this translates to 100 
percent of all Israeli water projects receiving the go-ahead, including 
those in the illegal settlements, while nearly half of Palestinian needs 
are rejected.

Presently, according to Oxfam, Israel controls 80 percent of Palestinian 
water resources. “The 520,000 Israeli settlers use approximately six 
times the amount of water more than that used by the 2.6 million 
Palestinians in the West Bank.”

The reasoning behind this is quite straightforward, according to 
Stephanie Westbrook, writing in Israel’s +972 Magazine. “The company 
pumping the water out is ‘Mekorot’, Israel’s national water company. 
‘Mekorot’ not only operates more than 40 wells in the West Bank, 
appropriating Palestinian water resources, Israel also effectively 
controls the valves, deciding who gets water and who does not.”

“It should be no surprise that priority is given to Israeli settlements 
while service to Palestinian towns is routinely reduced or cut off,” as 
is the case at the moment.

The unfairness of it all is inescapable. Yet, for nearly five decades, 
Israel has been employing the same policies against Palestinians without 
much censure or meaningful action from the international community.

With current summer temperature in the West Bank reaching 38 degrees 
Celsius, entire families are reportedly living on as little as 2-3 
liters per capita, per day. The problem is reaching catastrophic 
proportions. This time, the tragedy cannot be brushed aside, for the 
lives and well-being of entire communities are at stake.

/*Dr. Ramzy Baroud* has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media 
consultant, an author of several books and the founder of 
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom 
Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: 
ramzybaroud.net/

-- 
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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