[News] Israel’s Discriminatory Policies Constitute a Systemic Attack on the Palestinian People’s Right to Water and Sanitation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://imemc.org/article/al-haq-world-water-day-israels-discriminatory-policies-constitute-a-systemic-attack-on-the-palestinian-peoples-right-to-water-and-sanitation/ 
<https://imemc.org/article/al-haq-world-water-day-israels-discriminatory-policies-constitute-a-systemic-attack-on-the-palestinian-peoples-right-to-water-and-sanitation/> 



  Israel’s Discriminatory Policies Constitute a Systemic Attack on the
  Palestinian People’s Right to Water and Sanitation

By IMEMC & Agencies - March 23, 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since the initial observation of the United Nations World Water Day on 
22 March 1993, Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Occupied 
Palestinian Territory (OPT), has continued to consolidate and expand its 
domination of the Palestinian people through its discriminatory and 
unlawful policies and practices around the control and distribution of 
water.

The human right to water encompasses a number of elements, including 
availability, quality, and accessibility, and includes the ability to 
both physically access water and the principle of non-discrimination in 
the distribution of water.

The OPT’s natural water supply comes from three main sources: the 
Jordan Valley, the Mountain Aquifer, which stretches from the West Bank 
across the Green Line, and the Coastal Aquifer, located around the Gaza 
Strip. Each of these sources are under Israeli military control, and 
have been the subject of extensive restrictions introduced either by the 
Israeli occupying forces or Mekorot, the Israeli national water company, 
into which the Palestinian water system has been integrated.

Palestinian direct access to water in the occupied West Bank is denied 
in favour of providing access to illegal Israeli settlements. 
Approximately 50,000 Palestinians residing in Area C of the West Bank 
are denied access to clean, safe, and affordable water, while as of 
2016, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank consumed on average only 73 
litres of water per day, well below the World Health OrganiZation’s 
(WHO) recommended 100 litres.

Conversely, Israeli settlers consumed approximately 369 litres per day, 
over three times the recommended average. It is estimated that Israeli 
settlers, *illegally* residing in the OPT, consume three to eight times 
more water than the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank, 
excluding East Jerusalem.

In the occupied Gaza Strip, subject to an ongoing 13 year closure and 
blockade, itself constituting collective punishment of some 2 million 
Palestinians, only one in ten households have direct access to clean and 
safe water. Only 5% of the water supply in the Gaza Strip is provided by 
Israel, the Occupying Power, and less than 4% 
<https://imemc.org/article/statistics-bureau-only-4-of-household-members-in-gaza-strip-have-access-to-safely-managed-water-that-is-free-of-pollution/> 
of Gaza’s fresh water supply is fit for human use and consumption.

Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab within the Green Line have 
been significantly affected, where 80,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel 
have no access to emergency medical services and 56,000 residents of 
villages unrecognized by Israel have inadequate access to safe, clean 
running water.

Palestinian refugees residing in overcrowded refugee camps and 
Palestinian prisoners facing overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in 
Israeli prisons are rendered more susceptible to the pandemic and denied 
access to adequate water and sanitation.

Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that:

    ‘To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying
    Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the
    co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and
    hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in
    the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption
    and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures
    necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.
    Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out
    their duties.’

That Israel, as Occupying Power, has failed, and is continuing to 
disregard its obligations under international humanitarian law and human 
rights law, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is borne out not 
only by the absence of any effort at adopting and applying ‘the 
prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of 
contagious diseases and epidemics,’ but by Israel’s discriminatory 
policies and practices, which actively deny Palestinians access to 
adequate water and sanitation.

Israeli ‘Water-Apartheid’ constitutes a systemic attack on the 
Palestinian people’s right to water and sanitation as well as a 
concerted assault on the broader right of Palestinians to the highest 
attainable standard of health, at a time of unprecedented global crisis.

Accordingly, Al-Haq <https://www.alhaq.org/> calls upon:

# Third party States, the international community, and private entities to 
recognise Israeli policies and practices with regards to access to water 
in the OPT as a gross and systematic denial of the right to health and 
to water and sanitation,
# Third party States, the international community to recognise the 
contributing factor of the construction, and maintenance, of Israel’s 
institutionalised regime of systematic racial domination and oppression, 
amounting to the crime of apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole.
# In line with their obligations erga omnes under international law, we 
urge all States to take positive measures, address the root causes of 
the apartheid and occupation and to bring this unlawful situation to an end.

~ See the full report here <https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/18062.html>.

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