[News] The murder of the 'menacing' water technician: On the shadow wars in the West Bank

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeastmonitor.com
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210809-the-murder-of-the-menacing-water-technician-on-the-shadow-wars-in-the-west-bank/>
The
murder of the 'menacing' water technician: On the shadow wars in the West
Bank
Dr Ramzy Baroud - August 9, 2021
------------------------------

There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is
rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the
making for decades.

On 26 and 27 July, two separate but intrinsically linked events took place
in the Ein Al-Hilweh area in the occupied Jordan Valley, and near the town
of Beita, south of Nablus.

In the first incident, Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of
Maskiyot began
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/jewish-settlers-take-over-water-spring-in-jordan-valley/>
construction in the Ein Al-Hilweh Spring, which has been a source of
freshwater for villages and hundreds of Palestinian families in that area.
The seizure of the spring has been developing for months, all under the
watchful eye of the Israeli occupation army.

Now, the Ein Al-Hilweh Spring, like most of the Jordan Valley's land and
water resources, is annexed by Israel.

Less than 24 hours later, Shadi Omar Salim, a Palestinian municipal
employee, was killed
<https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israeli-troops-kill-palestinian-man-in-occupied-west-bank-48722>
by Israeli soldiers in the town of Beita. The Israeli army quickly issued a
statement which, expectedly, blamed the Palestinian for his own death.

The Palestinian victim approached the soldiers in a "menacing manner",
while holding "what appeared to be an iron bar," before he was gunned down,
the Israeli army claimed
<https://www.una-oic.org/page/public/news_details.aspx?id=329590&NL=True>.

If the "iron bar" claim was true, it might be related to the fact that
Salim was a water technician. Indeed, the Palestinian worker was on his way
to open the pipes that supply water to Beita and other adjacent areas.

Beita, which has witnessed much violence in recent weeks, is facing an
existential threat. An illegal Jewish settlement, called Givat Eviatar, is
being built
<https://theowp.org/violence-escalates-in-beita-occupied-west-bank/> atop
the Palestinian Sabih Mountain, in Arabic, Jabal Sabih. As usual, whenever
a Jewish settlement is constructed, Palestinian life and livelihood are
threatened. Thus, the ongoing Palestinian protests in the area.

The struggle of Beita is a representation of the wider Palestinian
struggle: unarmed civilians fighting against a settler-colonial state that
ultimately wishes to replace a Palestinian village or town with a Jewish
settlement.

There is another facet to what may see as a typical story, where the
Israeli army and Jewish settlers work together to ethnically cleanse
Palestinians: Mekorot
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/>.
The latter is a state-owned Israeli water company that literally steals
Palestinian water and sells it back to the Palestinians at an exorbitant
price.

*READ: The people of Beita will use every means to keep their land free,'
says Palestinian activist
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210723-the-people-of-beita-will-use-every-means-to-keep-their-land-free-says-palestinian-activist/>*

Unsurprisingly, Mekorot operates near Beita as well. The Palestinian
worker, Salim, was killed because his job of supplying water to the people
of Beita was a direct threat to Israeli colonial designs in this region.

Let us put this in a larger context. Israel does not just occupy
Palestinian land, it also systematically usurps
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/>
all of its resources, including water, in flagrant violation of
international law which guarantees the fundamental rights of an occupied
nation.

The occupied West Bank obtains
<https://climate-diplomacy.org/case-studies/israel-palestine-water-sharing-conflict>
most of its water from the Mountain Aquifer, which is divided into three
smaller aquifers: the Western Aquifer, the Eastern Aquifer and the
North-Eastern Aquifer. In theory, Palestinians have plenty of water, at
least enough to meet the minimally-required water allotment of 102-120
litres per day, as recommended
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105>
by the World Health Organisation (WHO). In practice, however, this is
hardly the case. Sadly, most of the water in these aquifers is appropriated
directly by Israel. Some call it "water capture"; Palestinians call it,
more accurately, "theft".

[image: A Palestinian Suleyman al-Hadhalin reacts to Israeli forces as a
heavy duty machine accompanied with Israeli forces demolishes a mosque and
a water well under construction in Hebron, West Bank on January 27, 2021.
[Mamoun Wazwaz - Anadolu Agency]]

A Palestinian Suleyman al-Hadhalin reacts to Israeli forces as a heavy duty
machine accompanied with Israeli forces demolishes a mosque and a water
well under construction in Hebron, West Bank on January 27, 2021. [Mamoun
Wazwaz – Anadolu Agency]

While in Israel the daily per capita water consumption is estimated
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105>
at 300 litres, illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank consume
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105>
over 800 litres per day. The latter number becomes even more outrageous if
compared to the meager amount enjoyed by a Palestinian, that of 70 litres
per day.

This problem is accentuated in the so-called 'Area C' in the West Bank, for
a reason. 'Area C' consists
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105>
of nearly 60 per cent of the total size of the West Bank and, unlike 'Areas
A' and 'B', it is the least populated. It is mostly fertile land and it
includes the Jordan Valley, known as the 'breadbasket of Palestine'.

Despite the fact that the Israeli government had, in 2020, decided
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200701-israel-postpones-controversial-west-bank-annexation/>
to postpone its formal annexation of that area, a de facto annexation has
been in effect for years. The illegal appropriation of the Ein Al-Hilweh
Spring by illegal Jewish settlers is part of a larger stratagem that aims
at appropriating the Jordan Valley, one dunum, one spring, and one mountain
at a time.

Of the more than 150,000 Palestinians living in 'Area C', nearly 40 per
cent – over 200 communities – suffer
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105>
from "severe shortage of clean water". That shortage can be remedied if
Palestinians are allowed to drill new wells, expand current ones or to use
modern technologies to allocate other sources of freshwater. Not only does
the Israeli army prohibit them from doing so, even rainwater is off-limits
to Palestinians.

Israel even controls the collection of rainwater throughout most of the
West Bank and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian
communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army

an Amnesty International report
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/>,
published in 2017, concluded.

Since then, the situation became even worse, especially since the idea of
officially annexing a third of the West Bank obtained
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52756427> widespread support in
the Israeli Knesset and society. Now, every move made by the Israeli army
and Jewish settlers in the West Bank is directed towards that end,
controlling the land and its resources, denying Palestinians access to
their means of survival and, ultimately, ethnically cleansing them
altogether.

The Beita protests continue, despite the heavy price being paid. Last June,
a 15-year-old boy, Ahmad Bani Shamsa
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210618-israel-shoots-kills-15-year-old-palestinian-in-nablus/>,
was killed
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_shoot_and_kill_15_year_old_palestinian_boy_in_beita>
when an Israeli army bullet struck him in the head. At the time, Defense
for Children International-Palestine issued a statement asserting that
Bani-Shamsa did not pose any threat to the Israeli army.

The truth is, it is Beita that is under constant Israeli threat, as well as
the Jordan Valley, 'Area C', the West Bank and the whole of Palestine. The
protest in Beita is a protest for land rights, water rights and basic human
rights. Bani Shamsa and, later, Salim, were killed in cold blood simply
because their protests were mere irritants to the grand design of colonial
Israel.

The irony of it all is that Israel seems to love everything about
Palestine: the land, the resources, the food and even the fascinating
history, but not the indigenous Palestinians themselves.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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