Israeli Policy of Distribution Creates Unprecedented Water Shortages for West Bank, Gaza Palestinians

By Maureen Meehan

A small crowd of people gathered in the Halit Hadul area of Hebron where the Washington Report began its investigation of this summer’s Palestinian water crisis, the worst on record to date. People here and throughout the West Bank were desperate to tell their stories, which were basically the same: they have had no running water for the past four months.

“Not a drop has come out of our water taps for over four months now; our only option is to buy water,” said Mohammed al-Kawasme, a resident of the neighborhood, who led a small delegation to the mayor’s office to complain and seek solutions to what he describes as an intolerable situation.

“There is no water at the schools for the kids to drink, no water for washing, cooking, drinking, bathing. It’s been like this since before the beginning of summer,” said Kawasme, whose frustrated neighbors chimed in.

“Either we buy water at a premium from the private trucks or we wait weeks to buy from the city. The crisis has gotten out of hand,” added Samir Julani, who, from Kawasme’s rooftop, pointed down to his own parched garden of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and herbs. “I know we can’t water our plants when we’ve nothing to drink ourselves, but isn’t it sad to see our gardens dry up and die when people are hosing their gardens in the settlement just a few streets away?”

Israel’s near absolute control over all water resources in the West Bank and Gaza provides the basis for discriminatory policies and practices which favor the 140,000 Jewish settlers living in these areas while guaranteeing Israel’s water access with little obligation to share or distribute it equally.

Palestinian water experts estimate that the amount of water normally available to the nearly two million Palestinian residents in the West Bank and Gaza is less than two-thirds of what is needed to meet basic needs. In the case of Hebron, according to the Palestinian Water Authority, daily water use for the city’s 120,000 residents is less than 45 liters per capita, whereas each resident in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba is guaranteed at least 600 litres daily per person, not taking swimming pools into account. Such contradictions are repeated throughout Palestinian areas of the West Bank, where there are no public swimming pools, parks or playgrounds.

Given the lack of running water, Kawasme explained that people are forced to buy water from private vendors or the city municipality. A tank of 8,000 litres of water from a private vendor, who buys it from Kiryat Arba, costs about $60 (U.S.) while the city sells the same amount for half the price. Unfortunately, city deliveries can take up to a month.

“You could die of dehydration waiting for the city trucks to arrive. Besides, we should have running water just like the settlements,” said Kawasme angrily, pointing toward the double barbed-wire fence that encloses Kiryat Arba’s 5,800 Jewish residents.

“From our rooftops, we actually see settlers washing their cars,” added Hatem Zatari, a biology student at Hebron University. Zatari explained that when people have an opportunity to purchase a full tank of water, they have to store it in old and often dirty wells. Zatari says the quality of the water, even under ideal storage conditions, is questionable.

“We’ve had numerous children hospitalized with amoebas, dysentery and skin lesions caused by contaminated water,” said Zatari, whose extended family of 24 members has to buy water once a week.

Hauling a small (1,000 liters) water tank with his blue tractor, Abed Najari stopped in the road to answer a few questions about how the water sales system works. The otherwise unemployed Najari explained that he can wait up to three hours to buy a tank of water from a Palestinian middleman at a site just outside Kiryat Arba.

“With the tiny hose they use, it takes about half an hour to fill a large tank, so we just wait in line until it’s our turn,” said the sunburnt Najari. He explained the reason private water vendors charge so much. “The water is sold to us from the settlers who charge a lot, then the middleman takes his cut…so it ends up being expensive. But what can we do? We’re desperate.” He hinted at a black market system run by settlers and Palestinians which is even more expensive but quicker. “But only a handful of people can afford to get involved in providing water for the wealthy.”

The Palestinian middleman selling water outside Kiryat Arba denied knowing anything about bribes or a black market. He said he didn’t even know for whom he was working as his contact with the settlers was indirect.

Most of the West Bank is in a similar situation as Hebron. Abdel Rahman Tamimi, director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group, said more than half a million Palestinians—almost a third of the total population including 162 villages—have no access to running water in their homes. People, mostly women, often wait hours and walk kilometers to fetch water in clay pots which they carry home on their heads.

Tamimi said it is not a matter of scarcity but deprivation. “In many cases the water pipes of the Israeli Water Company, Mekorot, pass by within meters of Palestinian villages on their way to Israeli settlements. But Israeli authorities refuse to connect the villages to the running water systems,” Tamimi told reporters at a conference sponsored by EcoPeace, an Israeli/Palestinian environmental NGO.

“There is enough water to meet the needs of both people, Israeli and Palestinians. It is Israeli greed, not need, that is that is keeping Palestinians thirsty,” said Tamimi at the EcoPeace conference.

Tamimi told the meeting that deprivation and unequal distribution of water should be a security concern for Israel. “How can you expect Palestinians to be passive when they are thirsty? Nothing would raise Palestinian confidence in the peace process and therefore reduce Israel’s security concerns more than for all Palestinians to have running water in their homes.”

Israeli Professor Hillel Shuval of the Hebrew University expressed similar views regarding the water crisis and whether indeed Israel’s security is at risk. He said the Israeli public is being misled by politicians who are using the water scarcity issue to alarm the Israeli public when in fact water is not a key factor in the success of the Israeli economy.

“There is no real water scarcity since 70 percent of our water goes to agriculture which only contributes to 2 percent of our GDP,” said Shuval. He told the conference there is enough water for the domestic and industrial purposes of both Israeli and Palestinian economies for the next 30 years.

Renewable water sources in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel are rain-fed and comprise ground water and surface water. Ground waters consist of underground aquifers, while surface water sources consist of perennial and seasonal lakes and rivers such as the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. Two major ground water aquifers straddle the West Bank and Israel and account for more than 80 percent of annual water replenishment in the West Bank. However, Palestinians have limited access to this important resource as digging and drilling is severely restricted by Israel. It is worth mentioning that Israel still occupies and controls 70 percent of the West Bank and as much as 30 percent of the Gaza Strip.

Groundwater, the only significant source of water in the Gaza Strip, contains high levels of salinity as a result of over-pumping which has drastically lowered the water table thus allowing the intrusion of sea water, causing permanent damage to the dwindling fresh groundwater reserves. Water experts warn that unless immediate action is taken, by the end of the century Palestinians will not have access to a single drop of fresh drinking water in the whole of the Gaza Strip.

“People are drilling wells without technical records and permits. Unfortunately they are pumping salty water. The desperation is so high, they invest thousands of dollars without real benefits,” said Tamimi.

Shuval explained that groundwater in Gaza was overpumped by 50 percent before the signing of the 1993 peace accord. Since the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority in Gaza, hundreds of new wells have been put in, “and they’re all pumping water that does not exist. It is suicidal. It can only be controlled if we have a rational solution for providing Gazans with fresh drinking water.”

Under the peace accord, Israel continues to control water sources for the Palestinians and the amount of water available for their use. The PNA is permitted to set up its own water system in the areas it controls, although work on such projects is incomplete or at a standstill. Meanwhile, Palestinians must request permission to dig new wells.

Deputy director of the Palestinian Water Authority, Fadel Qawash, told a press conference last week that of 40 requests to dig new wells, Israel approved only 6. He updated reporters on two meetings recently held between the Israel/PNA Joint Water Committee (JWC), at which both sides hurled accusations at the other about who is responsible for the water crises.

Water experts Tamimi and Shuval agree the JWC is not making much real headway in solving the problem. “There is no strategic agenda for the meetings, no negotiations about water, but rather discussion about how to solve the daily problems,” said Tamimi. He said the drawback is that water authority is not in the hands of the PNA but rather still being administered by Israel through the Ministry of Defense.

Tamimi said many donor countries are ready and waiting with money for water supply projects but cannot go ahead because there is no Palestinian access to resources. “You can’t run a business without controlling your bank account.”

Shuval said waste water projects are at a standstill because of disputes over who will be connected to the sewage system—Palestinian villages and Jewish settlements together? The Palestinians don’t want any connection with the settlements so as not to legitimize them; the Israeli government will not approve a plant that does not include the settlements. A proposed treatment plant is at a standstill over who will manage it.

“Currently donors’ money is not being spent and the sewage is running,” said Shuval. “International facilitation, mediation is needed by an independent outside partner to overcome major ideological roadblocks from both sides.”

Tamimi stressed that to reach a comprehensive peace, the entire Palestinian issue has to be addressed.

“Israelis talk about security and water. There are hundreds of reasons to go to war. But water is the main thing to force us to make peace,” Tamimi said. “Water is social, natural and environmental; it is the life of people. Don’t ask anybody to stay quiet when he is thirsty.”

Maureen Meehan is an American free-lance journalist who covers Jerusalem and the West Bank.

SIDEBAR

Five Years After Signing of the Peace Accord, Palestinians Have Neither Peace Nor Hope

The fifth-year anniversary of the signing of the Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians came and went with a general sense of growing bitterness and mounting dissent on the part of most Palestinians, who feel the process has failed and the Palestinian leadership has done little to brace the fall.

“We have nothing to show after five years…not only is there no peace but we are in terrible shape as a people,” said Hind Jawadat of Bethlehem. “Instead of uniting us in a struggle for statehood, the peace process has divided us, weakened us. We are still facing the same human rights violations—even from our own people.”

Dr. Haidar Abdel-Shafi, a bitter critic of Oslo and a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, believes the present feelings of frustration are a direct consequence of Oslo. Abdel-Shafi led the Palestinian delegation to the first Madrid Middle East peace conference in 1991, but later dropped out of the process when he learned of the secret talks that led to the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993. Since then, he has publicly announced his opposition to Oslo, mainly because it did not restrict the expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

“Israel has remained insistent about its illegal claim to Palestinian territory. It continued the confiscation of land and building of more settlements in order to establish a fait accompli. This was made clear during the Washington negotiations,” Abdel Shafi told the Washington Report.

“When Oslo was signed, it was claimed that it had provided everything needed for the peace process to succeed, but it did not solve the question of settlements. It just glossed over it without saying much. Israel exploited this to activate its settlement policy, and soon it consolidated its control of the occupied territories, and so there is no peace,” added Abdel-Shafi, who resigned in protest last year from his seat on the PLC.

Abdel-Shafi said it was quite obvious during the Washington talks five years ago that Israel had not abandoned its claim to all Palestinian territory.

And it seems that Dr. Abdel-Shafi was right. Five years after the signing of the Declaration of Principles at the White House in Washington, DC, the Jewish settler population has increased a full 50 percent since 1993, as both Labor and Likud governments poured hundreds of millions of dollars into settlement expansion and bypass roads. All this was done despite the stipulation in the accords prohibiting either side from carrying out activity that would change the status of the occupied territories. As a result, there is no territorial contiguity between any of the major areas under Palestinian control, which total only 27 percent of the West Bank and about 75 percent of the Gaza Strip. All this serves the interest of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu—who promised Israeli voters he would halt land-for-peace exchanges, and dashes any hopes of a Palestinian state.

“What land is there left to have for a state? The settlers are surrounding us and we are closed in most of the time,” said Aiman Najair, one of the organizers of the demonstration against Oslo. Marchers, disgusted with the peace process and disappointed with their own leaders, wound their way through the narrow alleyways of Dehieshe refugee camp in Bethelehem.

Another piece of data not to be overlooked during these five years of peace-making is that over 500 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israeli authorities. Most of the demolitions ostensibly were carried out because Palestinian owners built without Israeli permits, which are almost never issued and, when they are, cost over $2,000.

As Palestinian land dwindles and Jewish settlements grow, unrest is unavoidable and it is being met with lethal force, arrest, detention and closure. Local human rights monitors agree with the estimate that, over the past five years, Israeli security forces have shot and killed at least 265 Palestinians. In addition, some 60 people died at the hands of Israeli civilians, none of whom have ever been punished with more than a few days or weeks of detention.

Palestinians, on the other hand, continue to be arrested and routinely tortured at an alarming rate (see July/August Washington Report). Continued mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners and detention without charge or trial causes occasional embarassing moments for Israel. But by now it has become so common that it seldom is even discussed in the international community.

In addition to the Israeli human rights violations, the Palestinian National Authority also has violated the rights of Palestinian civilians. The PNA, which on Aug. 30 carried out its first executions of two convicted murderers only two days after their crime and one day after their trial, also has arrested and detained hundreds of civilians, many of them members of the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian security forces have been accused of torturing detainees under interrogation, causing the deaths of 19 people in custody. The Palestinian security forces also have used lethal force against unarmed civilians during public protests. In addition, human rights activists and individuals who have criticized mismanagement and corruption of PNA institutions and officials have been detained along with opposition figures who are critical of the peace accords.

Most analysts agree the PNA is under tremendous pressure from Israel and the United States to clamp down on opponents of the peace process and to control potential “terrorists” who threaten Israeli security, by far the central element in the entire process.

“At every step of the way, we and everyone else are constantly reminded of Israel’s security. But what about our security?” asked Najair, a shop owner in Hebron.

The last five years of human rights abuses, land confiscation, settlement expansion, arrest, torture and death in custody are viewed by the vast majority of Palestinians as the direct result of the failed peace process, which has seen both sides lose all respect and regard for human rights.

Unfortunately the peace accords, dictated by a powerful Israel, have actually given the Jewish state more, not less, control of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. It has also effectively placed the Palestinian right to self-determination, which was originally expected to have been the natural outcome of the process, on the negotiating table where it is viewed by Israel as a contentious, almost illegal issue.

When the Washington Report asked what should be done, most agreed that the peace process has been a disaster and that it is effectively dead. Knowing the details, which not many did five years ago, people now believe that even if the accord had been carried out to the letter, there was never much in it for the Palestinians.

“We were obviously not meant to get a state out of this as we’d thought in the beginning,” said Najair, the Hebron shopkeeper. “Israel was meant to benefit, and it did. We obviously were not—and we didn’t.”

Mahmoud Fanoun, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, thinks there still is hope, but only if Palestinians are “united in struggle, knowing the PNA no longer represents us.” Fanoun pointed out that Oslo also has served to break Palestinian ranks.

“Oslo has left out Palestinians in the diaspora who feel neglected. There are still hundreds of thousands of refugees who have nowhere to return to and no permission [from Israel] to come home,” said Fanoun. “No one seems to care about them anymore. Surely the peace process was never meant to help them.”

Haidar Abdel-Shafi thinks the only choice now is to stop the process completely. “The right attitude is to boycott the negotiating process and tell the world the truth about the Israeli position. We should definitely not be partners in a process that is being exploited continuously by Israel,” said Abdel-Shafi. “Indeed, we regret that our Authority continues to sit at the negotiating table.”—M.M.