From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Oct 27 2009 - 17:54:29 EST
October 27, 2009
Israel accused of denying Palestinians access to water
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Up to 200,000 families have no running water, damning Amnesty report says
Israel is accused today of denying the West Bank and Gaza access to
adequate water through a "total" and "discriminatory" control that enables
its own people to consume four times as much as the Palestinians.
An Amnesty International report paints a picture of many Palestinian
families struggling - and often failing - to secure enough water for
drinking, cleaning, and agriculture while Israelis, including residents of
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, have all they need for lush, irrigated
farmland, swimming pools and gardens.
Amnesty also suggests that taxpayers in countries who donate aid to the
Palestinians are facing unnecessarily high costs to meet severe water
shortages because their governments are unwilling to challenge "the most
unreasonable" restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinian access to the
regionally scarce resource.
It claims the 450,000 settlers who have taken up residence in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem since the Six-Day War in 1967 consume as much as or more
than the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. It says the
overall Palestinian per capita consumption of 70 litres per day compares
with the WHO recommended level of 100 litres and Israeli consumption of
300.
The report adds that between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians living in
rural communities - especially in the Israeli controlled "Area C" which
comprises 60 per cent of the West Bank - have no access to running water.
According to Amnesty, the Israeli military "often" prevents them from
accessing rainwater - for example by destroying water-harvesting cisterns
or even confiscating water tankers.
At the same time the report highlights the unequal distribution of water
from the mountain aquifer which is the principal groundwater resource for
both communities, most of which is located in the West Bank, and from which
Israel draws 80 per cent. It also points out that using water for Israel's
supplies from the River Jordan - as Jordan does, and Syria and Lebanon do
further upstream - before the river reaches the West Bank, deprives
Palestinians of any access to the river's water.
The report is critical of past mismanagement by the Palestinian Water
Authority and says the international donors sometimes lack coordination in
funding water-related projects in the occupied territories. But the bulk of
the report blames Israeli restrictions and repeated refusals to grant
permits for wells and other installations.
While the Oslo accords in the mid-Nineties agreed a highly unequal
distribution, the report suggests the disparities have worsened since then.
Instead of challenging restrictions, international donors - among which the
principal governments are those of the US and Germany - choose to divert
"significant funds" to short-term projects such as repairing war damage or
funding tanker shipments at many times the cost of piped supplies.
In Gaza, the report says 90-95 per cent of the water from the coastal
aquifer which has traditionally supplied it, is now unfit for human
consumption. It adds that Israel's refusal to allow water to be exported
from the West Bank to Gaza, now compounded by the embargo on materials for
infrastructure development and repair, have brought Gaza's water and sewage
system to "crisis point."
Donatella Rovera, author of the Amnesty report, called for an end to the
restrictions and added that Palestinians were allowed "only a fraction" of
the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the West Bank, while "the
unlawful Israeli settlements receive virtually unlimited supplies".
Israel's water authority complained the report was "biased and incorrect"
and said it had met its obligations under the Oslo agreement while
Palestinians were not distributing water efficiently.
It also challenged the Amnesty figures and said the real gap was 408 litres
per head in Israel and 287 litres for the Palestinians. But Amnesty said
last night that Israeli figures did not take account of desalinated and
treated water consumed by Israel, or the 35 per cent of leakage from the
Palestinian water supply caused by Israel's failure to build new
infrastructure. Amnesty said its own figures showed a slightly smaller gap
than that identified by the World Bank.
Aisha and Hafez Hereni: 'We save every drop, but it's never enough'
*Aisha and Hafez Hereni live in the small village of Tuwani, located in the
Southern Hebron Hills. The village is not connected to a pipe network, and
so they rely on rainwater, stored in cisterns, and water delivered at great
expense by tankers.
The cisterns are often soiled by Israeli settlers, Aisha says - they have
found nappies and dead chickens in the supply. With the family's goats a
key food source, and five children, the need for an adequate supply is
critical. "We save every drop, but it's never enough," Aisha goes on. "It
is a daily struggle."
Nearby Israeli settlements are fully plugged in to the water network;
indeed, one water conduit passes through Tuwani on its way to an illegal
settlement. The Israeli army has denied the village permission to tap into
that supply, despite a prolonged drought. And in July this year, soldiers
delivered a stop work order for a large cistern that could have greatly
eased delivery costs by providing a long-term storage option. "We spend a
lot of money on water and we never have enough," says Hafez. "They are
trying to force us out of the area by all means. Taking our land is one way
and limiting our access to water is another way."