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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/access-to-clean-water-is-a-human-right-so-why-is-palestine-an-exception/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/access-to-clean-water-is-a-human-right-so-why-is-palestine-an-exception/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Access to Clean Water is a Human Right,
so Why is Palestine an Exception?</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time"><i><span
style="font-weight: 400;">Ramzy Baroud - May 31, 2019<br>
</span></i></div>
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<p>Free access to clean water is a basic human right. This
is not just a common-sense assertion, but also a binding
legal commitment enshrined in international law.</p>
<p>In November 2002, the UN Committee on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights<a
href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4538838d11.pdf"> adopted</a> “General
Comment No. 15” regarding the right to water:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The human right to water is indispensable for
leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite
for the realisation of other human rights.” (Article
I.1)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The discussion on water as a human right culminated
years later in UN General Assembly <a
href="https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/64/292">resolution</a>,
64/292 of 28 July 2010. It explicitly “recognizes the
right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as
a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment
of life and all human rights.”</p>
<p>It all makes perfect sense. There can be no life
without water. However, like every other human right, it
seems, the Palestinians are denied this one too.</p>
<p>There is a water crisis affecting the whole world, and
it is most pronounced in the Middle East. Climate
change-linked droughts, unpredictable rainfall, lack of
centralized planning, military conflicts and more have
resulted in unprecedented water insecurity.</p>
<p>The situation is even more complicated in Palestine,
though, where the water crisis is related directly to
the more general political context of Israel’s
occupation: apartheid, illegal Jewish settlements, siege
and war. While much attention has rightly been given to
the military aspect of the Israeli occupation, the
state’s colonial policies involving water receive far
less attention, but they are a pressing and critical
problem.</p>
<p>Ashraf Amra Indeed, total water control was one of the
first policies enacted by Israel after the establishment
of the military regime following the occupation of East
Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967.
Israel’s<a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-water-tool-dominate-palestinians-160619062531348.html"> discriminatory
policies</a> – its uses and abuses of Palestinian
water resources – can be described as “water apartheid”.</p>
<p>Excessive Israeli water consumption; the erratic use of
dams; and the denial of Palestinians of the right to
their own water or the digging of new wells have all
left vast and possibly irreversible environmental
consequences. They have fundamentally altered the
aquatic ecosystem altogether.</p>
<p>In the West Bank, Israel uses water to cement existing
Palestinian dependency on the occupation. It uses a
cruel form of economic dependency to keep Palestinians
reliant and subordinate. This model is sustained through
the control of borders, military checkpoints, collection
of taxes, closures, military curfews and the denial of
building permits. Water dependency is a centerpiece of
this strategy.</p>
<p>The “Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip”, known as the Oslo II Agreement, signed in Taba,
Egypt in September 1995, <a
href="http://www.palestine-australia.com/assets/Uploads/Water-Inequality-under-Oslo-II-21102016.pdf">crystallized</a> the
unfairness of Oslo I, which was signed in September
1993. Over 71 percent of Palestinian aquifer water was
made available for Israeli use, with just 17 percent
allocated for Palestinian use.</p>
<p>Even more appallingly, the new agreement invited a <a
href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/736571530044615402/pdf/WP-P157979-Securing-Water-for-Development-in-West-Bank-and-Gaza-PUBLIC.pdf">mechanism</a> that
forced Palestinians to buy their own water from Israel,
further cementing the client-owner relationship between
the Palestinian Authority and the occupying state.</p>
<p>Israel’s Mekorot water company, a wholly-owned
government entity, misuses its privileges to reward and
punish Palestinians as it sees fit. In the summer of
2016, for example, entire Palestinian communities in the
occupied West Bank<a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/palestinian-villages-hours-water-week-161023105150024.html"> went
without water</a> because the PA failed to pay Israel
massive sums of money to buy back water taken from
Palestinian natural resources.</p>
<p>Bewildering, isn’t it? And yet many are still wondering
why Oslo failed to deliver the much-coveted “peace”.</p>
<p>Look at the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/israel-worlds-leading-practitioner-water-apartheid">numbers</a> in
order to appreciate this water apartheid: Palestinians
in the West Bank use about 72 liters of water per person
per day, compared to 240-300 liters for Israelis. The
political responsibilities of such unequal distribution
of available water resources can be attributed to both
the cruel Israeli occupation and the short-sighted
vision of the Palestinian leadership.</p>
<p>The situation in Gaza is even worse. The territory will
be officially <a
href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/water-crisis-may-make-gaza-strip-uninhabitable-by-2020">“unliveable”</a> by
2020, according to a UN report. That’s next year. The
main reason for this grim prediction is Gaza’s water
crisis.</p>
<p>According to a study <a
href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/occupied-palestinian-territory-and-israel/failing-gaza-undrinkable-water-no-access-toilets">conducted</a> by
international charity Oxfam, “Less than four percent of
freshwater [in Gaza] is drinkable and the surrounding
sea is polluted by sewage.” Oxfam researchers concluded
that water pollution is dangerously linked to a dramatic
increase in kidney problems in the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s
water and sanitation crises are worsening as frequent
shutdowns of the enclave’s only functioning power plant
are killing any hope for a remedy.</p>
<p>The US-based RAND Corporation found that one-fourth of
all diseases in the besieged Gaza Strip are waterborne.
RAND estimations are no less dramatic. It reports that,
based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, <a
href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/study-warns-water-sanitation-crisis-gaza-may-cause-disease-outbreak-and-possible-epidemic#ftn3">97
percent</a> of Gaza’s water is not fit for human
consumption. In terms of human suffering, this reality
can only be described as horrific.</p>
<p>The hospitals in the Gaza Strip are trying to fight the
massive epidemic of illness and disease caused by dirty
water while underequipped, suffering electricity cuts
and lacking any clean water themselves. “Water is
frequently unavailable at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital
in Gaza” the RAND report<a
href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/study-warns-water-sanitation-crisis-gaza-may-cause-disease-outbreak-and-possible-epidemic#ftn3"> continues</a>.
“Even when it is available, doctors and nurses are
unable to sterilize their hands to carry out surgery
because of the water quality.”</p>
<p>According to the environmental media platform Circle of
Blue, out of Gaza’s 2 million residents, <a
href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/water-crisis-may-make-gaza-strip-uninhabitable-by-2020">only
10 percent</a> have access to clean drinking water.</p>
<p>“My children get sick because of the water,” Madlain
Al-Najjar, a mother of six living in the Gaza Strip,
told Circle of Blue. “They suffer from vomiting and
diarrhea. Often, I can tell that the water is not clean,
but we have no other option.”</p>
<p>Britain’s Independent <a
href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/water-crisis-may-make-gaza-strip-uninhabitable-by-2020">reported</a> on
the story of Noha Sais, a 27-year-old mother of five,
living in Gaza. “In the summer of 2017, every one of
Noha’s children suddenly fell ill, uncontrollably
vomiting and were soon hospitalized. Gaza’s filthy
Mediterranean waters had poisoned them.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The youngest, Mohamed, normally a healthy and
boisterous five-year-old, contracted an unknown virus
from the sea, which took over his body and brain.
Three days after the trip, he slipped into a coma. A
week after that he died.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Noha told the newspaper that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The doctors said the source of the infection was a
germ that came from the polluted seawater, but they
couldn’t work out exactly what it was. They just said
to me even if my son recovered, he would never be the
same – he would be a vegetable.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many similar cases are reported across Gaza, and there
is no end in sight. Israel’s water policies are facets
of a much larger war against the Palestinian people
intended to reinforce its colonial control.</p>
<p>Judging by the evidence, Zionists didn’t “make the
desert bloom,” as Israeli propaganda claims. Since its
establishment on the ruins of more than five hundred
Palestinian towns and villages destroyed between 1947
and 48, Israel has done the exact opposite.</p>
<p>“Palestine contains vast colonization potential which
the Arabs neither need nor are qualified to exploit,” <a
href="https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/the-ben-gurion-letter/">wrote</a> one
of Israel’s founding fathers and first Prime Minister,
David Ben Gurion, to his son Amos in 1937. Zionist
Israel, though, has done more than just “exploit” that
“colonization potential”; it has also subjected historic
Palestine to a relentless and cruel campaign of
destruction that is yet to cease. This is likely to
continue as long as Zionism prevails in Israel and
occupied Palestine; it is a racist, hegemonic and
exploitative ideology. If access to clean water is
indeed a human right, why is the world allowing Israel
to make Palestine and its people an exception?</p>
<p><i><span>– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and
editor of Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The
Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press,
London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies
from the University of Exeter and was a Non-Resident
Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and
International Studies, University of California
Santa Barbara. His website is </span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a></p>
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