Close to Home: Palestinians still suffer drought inoccupation

The article by New York Times Israel correspondent Isabel Kershner on May 30 celebrated the end of the drought in Israel as a result of Israeli ingenuity and innovation. The Press Democrat reprinted the article the following day without including the New York Times picture of a large hotel swimming pool surrounded by the Negev desert.

These Israeli competencies exist within a broader more complex reality: that Israel has achieved its “end of drought” for its own citizens while gravely impinging on the rights of Palestinians.

The two main sources of water for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank are compromised by Israeli actions including:

Mountain aquifers: The Oslo Accords in 1995 allotted to Israel more than three-quarters of the water from the mountain aquifers that lie mostly in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the World Bank, Israel has since extracted 80 percent more water than allotted while the Palestinians extraction has actually declined.

How has this happened? Israel has dug huge, very deep wells, which has reduced the level of the groundwater. Palestinian wells go dry because Israel refuses them permits to dig existing wells deeper or to dig new wells.

The Jordan River. The river flows along the eastern border of the occupied West Bank and largely serves as the boundary between the occupied West Bank and Jordan. Only 3 percent of the river actually abuts Israeli territory (i.e., not the Palestinian West Bank), yet Israel obtains about 25 percent of its water from this source while the Palestinians are denied any access to this water.

Kershner contends that because of Israeli intelligence and skills, it no longer has any worry about water. If this is the case, why do Israeli policies continue to impede Palestinian access to water? The separation wall has been built in many places so as to annex to Israel lands east of the Green Line (the 1949 armistice line) where many of the most important underground wellsprings in the West Bank are located.

Many Palestinian villages are denied the right to hook up to the water system reportedly because they are within “closed military areas” or are unrecognized by Israel despite Palestinians living there for centuries.

According to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, the alternatives for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are to use rainwater-collecting cisterns, which are routinely destroyed by Israel; to use wells, which are not deep enough to extract water; or to buy water from Israeli private companies at prices almost three times the price paid by, for example, the Israeli settlements of Ariel and Karnei Shomron.

What is the result of all these Israeli policies and actions? According to the World Bank, water extractions per capita for West Bank Palestinians are about one-quarter of those for Israelis and have declined over the past decade. In 1999, Palestinians in the West Bank used only 190 liters per capita per day from West Bank resources. The settlers use ?870 liters per capita per day, or roughly 4.5 times that amount.

As a matter of international law, an occupying state is obligated to guarantee the provision of food, water and medicines and to protect and prohibit the destruction of water facilities. Why does Israel flout these laws?

If it is clever and industrious enough to vanquish the drought, why does it need to violate international law with respect to the Palestinians under its control?

Joan Meisel, a resident of ?Cloverdale, is a member of the North Coast Coalition for Palestine.