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class="header"> <font size="-2"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/24/how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/24/how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/24/how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war/</a></a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">How Israel Uses Water as a Weapon of War</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - June 24, 2016<br>
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<p><br>
</p>
<p>Entire communities in the West Bank either have no
access to water or have had their water supply reduced
almost by half.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This was the case during the First Palestinian
Intifada, or uprising, which erupted in 1987 throughout
the Occupied Palestinian Territories.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong>
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</em> </p>
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