[News] The “Apolitical” Approach to Palestine’s Water Crisis
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Tue Aug 1 13:18:14 EDT 2017
https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/apolitical-approach-palestines-water-crisis/
The “Apolitical” Approach to Palestine’s Water Crisis
by Muna Dajani on July 30, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Overview *
Earlier this month, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced
a new deal in which Israel will sell the Palestinians 33 million cubic
meters
<http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Israel-PA-agree-on-water-deal-499575>of
desalinated Red Sea water per year, with 10 million cubic meters
transferred to the Gaza Strip and the rest to the West Bank.
The deal masks the fact that Palestine is undergoing a man-made, rather
than natural, water crisis. Government officials, the international
community, donor agencies, and even academic literature portray
Palestine’s lack of water resources as a foregone conclusion – a result
of the region’s climatic conditions. What these narratives fail to
address is that Palestine’s water scarcity is a social and political
construct that obscures how Israel entrenches its hegemony over water
resources, resulting in severe water inequality for Palestinians.
For decades, Israel has proposed technological solutions to address this
scarcity, such as desalination plants and wastewater treatment and
reuse. International donors have played a major role in reinforcing
Israel’s approach. These solutions are tied to the belief that science,
technology, and infrastructure will ensure that water is no longer a
source of contention, conflict, and even war. But these technologically
driven solutions disregard the social, political, and cultural elements
of water.
This is not to say that technological advances in water are not
essential for the development of societies. Indeed, the harnessing of
additional water sources is needed to accommodate increasing
populations, particularly in the face of the effects of climate change.
But in the case of Israel and Palestine such technologies have embedded
political motivations and uses. Indeed, we must ask: How does Israel
benefit from these technological advancements while maintaining its
coercive control over the water of the West Bank, not to mention its
responsibility for the water crisis in the Gaza Strip? Can Palestinians
rely on the potential of technology to increase their water availability
under the context of occupation?
This policy brief examines how, in fact, Israel’s technological
innovations operate in a context of systematic theft of water resources,
which weakens Palestinian efforts to attain water rights and the
equitable allocation of water sources. It focuses particularly on
international donors’ role in shoring up this situation, and offers
recommendations on what Palestinians can do to challenge the status quo
and obtain the water rights to which they are entitled.
*The Establishment of Israel’s Water Hegemony *
When Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights in
1967, all the headwaters of the Jordan River, in addition to West Bank
groundwater, came under its control. ^1 <#note-6518-1>In 1982, the
Israeli military transferred its control of the West Bank’s water
resources to Mekorot
<http://www.mekorot.co.il/eng/newsite/Pages/default.aspx>, Israel’s
water company founded in 1937.
The 1993 Oslo Accords established a Joint Water Committee (JWC) through
which Israelis and Palestinians coordinate management of water resources
in the West Bank. Yet the Accords allow Israel to control Palestinian
water infrastructure development by sanctioning and freezing Palestinian
water projects while also intimidating Palestinians so as to legitimize
water projects in settlements, which are illegal under international law.
Israel is currently using 85% of the shared water resources of the West
Bank, leaving Palestinians high and dry. Not only does Israel exert
hegemony over access to West Bank resources, the Palestinian Water
Authority is completely dependent on Israel as the main supplier of
water, purchasing its stock from Israel since the Oslo Accords. And
contrary to Israeli claims, the Palestinians are not receiving gratis
water additional to that which was allocated by Oslo
<http://www.alhaq.org/publications/Water-For-One-People-Only.pdf>,
leaving the PA with no choice but to buy more water
<http://www.pwa.ps/userfiles/file/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1/%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%81%201/WR%20STATUS%20Report-final%20draft%202014-04-01.pdf>from
Mekorot to meet the increasing demand of its population. ^2 <#note-6518-2>
Israel uses 85% of the shared water resources of the West Bank, leaving
Palestinians high and dry
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Moreover*, *Israel has since the 1990s made huge investments in
desalination and wastewater treatment, enabling it to become a water
exporter to its water-scarce neighbors. Mekorot manages 100
mega-projects throughout Israel, including 40 desalination facilities
that provide 60 million cubic meters of water per year. In addition,
Israel’s wastewater reclamation and treatment facilities allow it to
reuse 60% of its treated wastewater for agricultural purposes. Israel
outsources this technical expertise to the developing world, and its
collaborations with water companies and governments of Argentina,
Cyprus, Uganda, Azerbaijan, and Portugal generate billions of dollars.
With its drive for technical solutions that ignore the politics of its
appropriation of Palestinian water, Israel’s agreements with the PA have
addressed water as a practical issue. The established transfers, quotas,
and swaps fail to adhere to the principles of international water law
<http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/39835>, which call for
equitable water allocations and the acknowledgment of Palestinian water
rights. After a six-year freeze in the JWC’s work, cooperation resumed
in January 2017. The freeze was due to a conditional arrangement in
which Israeli settlement projects had to be approved for Palestinian
projects to be considered. According to Jan Selby
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/jan-selby/what-hope-for-two-state-solution>,
between 1998 and 2010, Palestinians gave approval to more than 100
Israeli projects in the West Bank, but 97 donor-funded projects are
still awaiting Israeli approval. The resumption of meetings and
cooperation is far from benign. While the new arrangement will allow
Palestinians to carry out the laying of pipes and networks without JWC
approval, it does the same for Israel, meaning that Israel can develop
its networks for settlements without joint approval from the JWC.
Moreover, as Selby notes, “Though Palestinians will now have autonomy to
lay pipelines, what they won’t have is any additional water to go in
them – except with Israeli consent.”
*How Donor Funding Shores Up Israel’s Status Quo*
The international donor community, in its eagerness to establish
evidence of the usefulness of its million-dollar investments,
exacerbates this system of water inequality between Israel and
Palestine. Though donors’ approach has been to increase water
availability and protect the health of people and the environment, under
occupation this is achieved through acquiescence to the status quo. Aid
is not supposed to be a long-term intervention, but rather should
provide support to local actors and communities so they can develop
sustainable resource reclamation and ownership. Considering the
decades-long interventions and millions of dollars channeled to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the water sector, the failure of
donor communities to enhance the living conditions of Palestinians
demonstrates how aid has harmed the recognition of Palestinian rights.
Since the 1990s, international donor agencies have increased investment
in the Palestinian water sector by constructing small- and large-scale
wastewater treatment plants, water networks, sewage lines, and even a
desalination plant in Gaza. Most of these projects are conducted under
the terms of the Oslo Accords, which dictate that the Joint Water
Committee plans the projects before any money is given to the PA. As
such, the development of the water sector outside the narrow scope of
Oslo is restricted. ^3 <#note-6518-3>
The donor community exacerbates water inequality between Israel and
Palestine
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International investments have generally focused on the construction of
wastewater treatment plants in the West Bank, with increasing donor
interest in the development of six major plants
<http://www.arij.org/files/arijadmin/2016/SOER_2015_final.pdf>in Nablus
West, Jenin, Jericho, Al-Bireh, Ramallah, and Tulkarm. Yet a significant
number of these projects do not come to fruition. The Salfit wastewater
treatment plant, for example, secured funding in the 1990s but has never
been operational. The JWC has taken the project through a labyrinth of
bureaucracy, from changing its approved location to making its operation
conditional on linking it to the Ariel settlement, one of the largest
settlement blocs in the West Bank that channels its untreated wastewater
into Palestinian villages nearby.
The official framing of these projects obfuscates underlying political
issues. In 2015, for instance, the European Union and the Palestinian
Water Authority (PWA) signed an agreement to construct a $20.5 million
wastewater treatment plant in Tubas Governorate in the northeastern West
Bank. The Head of the PWA, Mazin Ghunaim, said
<http://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/westbank/documents/news/2015/20151022_pr_sewerage_tubas_en.pdf>:
Untreated wastewater remains a major challenge in Palestine and has
serious implications on health, environment, and agriculture. This
project will significantly reduce health risks for the population of
North Tubas Governorate and the contamination of the environment.
/It will also allow the re-use of treated wastewater in agriculture
hence conserving the limited groundwater resources in Palestine/.
(emphasis added)
Such convictions of the need for wastewater infrastructure to replace a
“limited” resource is echoed by many PA officials, donor agencies, and
civil society organizations.
While wastewater treatment is necessary, its framing as an additional
water source for agriculture strengthens the notion of finding
alternative means of achieving water rights in Palestine. In other
words, the focus on the potential of wastewater rather than
Palestinians’ lack of water rights couches water as a natural crisis
that needs a technological solution – rather than a man-made problem
that deliberately deprives Palestinians of a vital resource.
As for the Gaza Strip, over the last decade news articles, reports, and
international campaigns have described its water scarcity as
“catastrophic
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/06/gaza-looming-humanitarian-catastrophe-highlights-need-to-lift-israels-10-year-illegal-blockade/>,”
“alarming,”
<http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/11/22/water-situation-alarming-in-gaza>and
constituting a “humanitarian crisis
<https://water.fanack.com/specials/gaza-water-crisis/why-water-crisis-in-gaza/>.”
Indeed, the population is forced to make do with a main water source – a
coastal aquifer – that is 96% unfit for human consumption. This is due
to decades of over-extraction, sewage contamination, and seawater
intrusion. Israel’s blockade and offensives have exponentially
exacerbated this problem and solidified water de-development, in large
part due to the destruction of vital wastewater treatment plants,
reservoirs, and power stations.
The international community as well as the PA have since the 1990s
framed Gaza’s water crisis as solvable via a desalination plant. The
Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean, a body bringing together
28 EU countries and 15 nations from the southern and eastern shores of
the Mediterranean, has particularly pushed for the project. The union
argues
<http://ufmsecretariat.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Gaza-Desalination-Project-Fact-Sheet-14-May-2012.pdf>:
With no alternative existing source of fresh water, a large-scale
desalination plant is an absolute requirement to address the water
deficit in Gaza. The urgency for the Desalination Facility for Gaza
has increased with the rising level of humanitarian crisis in Gaza
related to inadequate water resources with related impacts on human
health.
Such an approach strengthens the narrative of the geographical and
political separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, treating Gaza
as a standalone entity requiring its own energy-intensive facility for
water. These claims ignore the fact that the water of the West Bank –
almost entirely controlled by Israel – can provide relief to Gaza. As
Clemens Messerschmid, a German hydrologist working in the Palestinian
water sector, contends <http://thisweekinpalestine.com/bitter-water/>:
Under international water law, Gaza has a right to a fair share of
the Coastal Aquifer Basin. Gaza cannot be separated from the rest of
Palestine. Gaza must be supplied from outside, just like New York,
London, Paris, or Munich. The water-rich West Bank purchases
ever-increasing amounts of water from Mekorot Company (Israel),
while Gaza should look after itself? This is pure and 100-percent
Israeli long-standing logic and hydro-political rationale. The
historical Palestinian struggle for water rights, for an “equitable
and reasonable share of trans-boundary water resources,” which is
enshrined in international water law, is abandoned under this new
paradigm. The Israeli Negev has a surplus of water because the
entire upper Jordan River is transferred at Lake Tiberias into the
National Water Carrier, which passes Gaza at its doorstep. Huge
amounts of surplus water are literally flowing past Gaza, while the
Strip keeps drying up.
Similar to the wastewater treatment plants in the West Bank, Gaza’s
desalination plant, though constructed, is not fully operational.
UNICEF, after decades of raising funds from the EU and others,
inaugurated the plant in January 2017. However, by the end of February
the plant was only running on a partial basis
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/largest-seawater-desalination-plant-opened-gaza>,
powered by emergency fuel. Desalination plants also require continuous
maintenance and spare parts and materials, which is now facilitated
under the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism. Designed to “facilitate
urgently needed reconstruction,” the Mechanism made the blockade its
starting point, a move that Oxfam criticized
<https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/treading-water-worsening-water-crisis-and-gaza-reconstruction-mechanism>as
normalizing the siege and “giving the appearance of legitimizing an
extensive control regime.” Moreover, Oxfam reiterated the danger of
separating economic and technological solutions from political conditions.
When Palestinian and international policymakers flag desalination as the
only solution to Gaza’s water situation, this shores up the narrative
that technological advancement saves the day, without addressing the
underlying political realities and restrictions on the ground.
It also exemplifies donors’ naïve approach to water in Gaza and the West
Bank. Essentially, these projects fail to challenge – and thus, even
unwittingly, underwrite – Israel’s international law violations, namely
its continued occupation and expropriation of Palestinian land and
natural resources.
Moreover, the main donors, namely the EU, the UK, and the US, not only
fund problematic projects, but actively promote Israeli technology and
scientific advancement while ignoring the potential for Palestinian
water research.
*The Elision of Palestinians from Infrastructure, Technology, and
Scientific Collaboration*
With the Israeli occupation imposing military laws on the access and
control of essential resources such as water, as well as tightening
imports of basic fuel and energy sources,
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/israel-uses-gas-enforce-palestinian-dependency-promote-normalization/>the
Palestinian Authority has not developed substantial infrastructural
development in the water sector for decades, especially in Area C, which
constitutes 60% of the West Bank. The occupation’s “civil
administration” has the power to veto
<https://d.docs.live.net/3bc2c24cbfa8d5cd/Al%20Shabaka/EWASH%20Press%20Release%20http:/www.ewash.org/sites/default/files/inoptfiles/160621%20-%20EWASH%20PR-%20Water%20Restrictions%20West%20Bank%20Result%20of%20Israeli%20Discriminatory%20Policies.pdf>all
infrastructure projects in Area C, with an acceptance rate of only 1.5%
between 2010 and 2014. Most large water projects have been frozen due to
Israel’s condition of connecting settlements to such projects, whose
funds come from donor agencies to the Palestinian people. Area C
therefore remains a site of de-development and is framed by the
international community as a space of humanitarian intervention only.
Moreover, the international community’s close collaboration with and
admiration of Israel’s water technology remains unconstrained and blind
to the de-development and sanctioning of the Palestinian water sector.
Recently, the EU rated Jerusalem
<https://www.thenation.com/article/how-israel-uses-water-to-control-palestinian-life/>–
occupied by Israel in violation of international law – as one of the top
five cities in the world for water efficiency, management, and
innovation. This congratulates an occupation regime for its work in a
city where 36% of its Palestinian residents are not even connected to
the Israeli water infrastructure and where discriminatory policies are
implemented in order to empty the metropolis of Palestinian inhabitants
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/economic-collapse-east-jerusalem-strategies-recovery/>.
The apoliticization of water issues impedes the Palestinian quest for
the right to self-determination
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In 2012, the European Commission and the Israeli Ministry of Energy and
Water Resources signed a five-year memorandum of understanding
<http://ec.europa.eu/research/iscp/index.cfm?pg=israel>to strengthen
scientific cooperation, especially in the field of water desalination
and energy. The British government is also pursuing such collaboration
with Israel. It recently launched two platforms
<https://www.gov.uk/government/world-location-news/britain-launches-joint-israeli-palestinian-effort-to-tackle-water-and-health-issues>that
entail such initiatives as placing Palestinian graduate students in
Israeli laboratories to build partnerships and “solve serious water
shortage and quality issues.” Apart from the business-as-usual stance
toward an occupying force, the approach is problematic in that it seeks
to normalize the occupation given that investment in scientific
excellence is not considered for Palestinian universities and research
institutions. Rather, all work benefits the institutions of the occupier.
One seeming exception to this trend is through the UK’s Department for
International Development, which supplied$1.6 million to help vulnerable
rural farmers in Area C of the West Bank, mainly Bedouin herders,
support their families due to the increased cost of agricultural
production. The program has allowed the farmers to rehabilitate water
cisterns, and has provided approximately 20 miles of water conveyance
systems; these developments have improved irrigation efficiency
<https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/international-development/DFID%E2%80%99s-one-year-update-on-the-OPTs.pdf>.
Cisterns, however, have limited storage capacity (70 cubic meters/year)
and rely on harvesting rainwater. As such, their rehabilitation only
alleviates, rather than helps to solve, the occupation’s imposed water
shortage, and in a broader sense weakens Palestinian efforts to achieve
an equitable share of resources by limiting more empowering water
development to small-scale solutions.
In sum, donors have continued a business-as-usual approach that
normalizes the occupation, engaging with and funding research and
scientific collaboration with Israel and investing millions of dollars
in water infrastructure development commandeered by Israel. Donors are
even rehabilitating or rebuilding infrastructure that Israeli forces
destroy. Donors’ complicity in these destructive mechanisms contributes
to Palestinian complacency and dependency, as well as an overall
de-development of the Palestinian water sector. An overwhelming
apoliticization of water issues impedes the Palestinian quest for the
right to self-determination.
*The Struggle for Palestinian Control over Water: Ways Forward *
While the water situation may look bleak for Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, there are a number of strategies that Palestinians
and their allies are undertaking – and can develop further – to reveal
the political, man-made nature of water inequality in the OPT and push
for just solutions to the crisis.
* Highlight how the donor-led water sector development approach is
distracting at best, and harmful to Palestinian dignity,
independence, and overall success in reclaiming water rights at
worst. This will require campaigns and programs that enhance
awareness of the politics of water and demand donor accountability
to ensure Palestinian water rights are met within the Palestinian
agenda, namely through addressing Israel’s rights violations and
occupation.
* Demand that donor-funded water sector development projects follow a
comprehensive and territorial contingency plan throughout the OPT.
Such projects should ensure that development – not humanitarian
aid – programs are implemented in a participatory and transparent
matter so that water rights are made a top priority.
* Strengthen Palestinian research institutions and universities as
hubs of knowledge on natural resource politics and management, where
appropriate technologies and applied research are produced to
reflect the political, social, economic, and cultural facets of
natural resource management under occupation, and develop a robust
technical niche of Palestinian water experts and engineers to
support local, community-led mobilization.
* Demand greater transparency of PA authorities to ensure they protect
the Palestinian right to natural resources by strengthening and
actively joining both local and international water rights campaigns
and providing a strong platform for civil society organizations to
represent Palestinian water injustice nationally and internationally.
* Build alliances with international and transnational movements to
further expose Israeli water rights violations and develop a global
action campaign with indigenous communities that actively oppose
large-scale extractive industries and states.
Finally, underpinning all the above, it is vital to reintroduce and
reframe the struggle over access to and control of natural resources as
part of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and freedom.
______________________________
1. Israel’s expropriation of the Jordan River and West Bank groundwater
did not commence in 1967. In the 1950s, for instance, Israel
established the National Water Carrier, which diverted 350 million
cubic meters of water annually from the Jordan River to its coastal
cities and the Naqab/Negev region. Further, prior to 1967 Israel had
been tapping into a rich aquifer from the Israeli side of the Green
Line.
2. The Palestinian Water Authority states that it purchases 55-57
million cubic meters of water from Mekorot annually, and utilizes
103 million cubic meters per year from the basins (below the 118
million cubic meters per year defined in the Oslo Accords – which in
itself is outdated and insufficient).
3. In addition, Israel has used the lack of wastewater infrastructure
in the West Bank to accuse Palestinians of polluting streams and
wadis. However, the JWC and the Israeli Civil Administration have
vetoed and thus stalled the development of West Bank wastewater
infrastructure. Israeli settlements and their industrial plant
sewage also threaten the health of Palestinians and destroy the
environment. Israel additionally capitalizes on this sewage, as it
treats it in its facilities but charges the PA for the treatment.
The treated wastewater is then used for Israeli agriculture. See
B’Tselem, “Foul Play: Neglect of Wastewater Treatment in the West
Bank,” 2009.
--
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