"With the wall, the Israelis clearly sought to commandeer water resources," says Hind Khury, a former Palestinian cabinet minister responsible for Jerusalem and now the government's representative in Paris. "Without water, there is no life. Israeli policy has always been to push Palestinians into the desert.”
Khury’s accusations echo previous statements by several Palestinian officials and human right activists, who charge that Israel designed the route of the separation barrier to ensure that it controls water resources in the arid northern West Bank.
The Palestinians also say that Israel, which claim that the barrier is needed for its security, deliberately built the “apartheid wall” to grab more of the lands they need for a future state and impose a border without waiting for a peace agreement. They charge that the route of the barrier was dictated by demographic considerations to ensure a Jewish majority in the disputed city of Jerusalem. Israel’s acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed these views when he announced last month that the barrier will largely follow Israel’s final borders.
According to Israel’s Information Centre for Human Rights, the separation barrier will negatively affect around half a million Palestinians. More than 14 Palestinian towns and villages, with more than 24,000 Palestinians, will be cut off by the wall from the rest of the West Bank. The wall will also surround 53 towns and villages, inhabited by at least 230,000 Palestinians, and isolate 18 Palestinian towns and villages in East Jerusalem, where 220,000 Palestinians live.
In the agriculture-dependent Palestinian territories, surrounded by Jewish settlements, the lack of resources causes massive losses for Palestinian farmers, while pollution and inadequate water disposal create manifold sanitation and health problems.
A recent UN report on the humanitarian impacts of the illegal barrier stated that the wall is hurting Palestinian farmers, who are banned by Israel from reaching farmland. The report also warned that the Palestinian agriculture land may eventually be confiscated by Israel if not cultivated. UN official Allegra Pacheco says the illegal barrier is causing a gruesome economic impact on the Palestinians who live close to it. "Our biggest concern is that farmers are increasingly not being allowed access to their farmland,” she said.
“The Israelis stole our land and took our water”
According to an article on AFP, Israel controls about 75 percent of the Palestinian water resources in the northern West Bank, where rainfall is rare and water is a strategic asset. "The route of the wall matches that of water resources, the latter being conveniently located on the Israeli side," said Elisabeth Sime, director of aid organization CARE International, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
While agriculture makes up almost a third of Palestinian gross domestic product, only five percent of Palestinian land is irrigated. On the other hand, 70 percent of Israeli and Jewish settlement land is watered, even if agriculture accounts for only two percent of Israeli GDP.
In the northern West Bank town of Nazlet Isa, Israel’s giant network of fences and concrete barricades has left six homes stranded on the Israeli side along with the rich underground aquifer. Although the Israeli government allowed a special system of pipes to access the water, immediate access and control still lies in its hands.
Abdul Rahman Tamimi, director of the non-governmental Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), said that Israel deliberately designed the route of the barrier to siphon off with the region's aquifers. “The wall cuts some communities off from their only source of water, prevents tanker trucks from getting around and puts up prices," he said.
Tamimi, moreover, said that at least 20 wells, or 30 percent of water resources in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, were lost because of the wall. "The fact that Israel confiscates and overexploits water affects every sector of Palestinian economic life and causes problems for the chances of development in the region and therefore chances of peace," he said.
According to Palestinian officials, more than 320,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank are not connected to mains water. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are therefore forced to buy water from trucks, an expense many cannot afford, to supplement local supplies that often fall short of demands.
“I can't go on like this. My land is parched and I'm ruined,” says 76-year-old Nazmi Abdul Ghani, who buys expensive water tankers to irrigate his lands in the northern West Bank village of Saida. "The Israelis stole our land and took our water," he added.
Palestinian health “at risk”
Three leading medical organizations, Medicins du Monde, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, said that the barrier is preventing the access of 10,000 chronically ill Palestinians to hospitals, and that it can also affect more than 100,000 pregnant Palestinian women who are denied access to healthcare.
"The wall has put Palestinian healthcare at risk, both for patients and medical staff that have difficulties accessing or are denied access to hospitals," said Medicins Du Monde president Francois Jeanson.
Ruchama Marton, a psychiatrist who heads Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, also stressed the negative psychological impact of the barrier on both Israelis and Palestinians.
Moreover, about a third of the local drinking water in the West Bank is contaminated by sewage and pesticides, creating some chronic health problems for Palestinian residents.
"The quality of water is getting worse and worse," said CARE's Sime. "A high proportion of new-born babies die of water-born infections. In the long run, Israelis will be affected by the pollution of water in the Palestinian territories."
According to Dr Hossam Madi, most Palestinian children suffer from darrhoea, gastroenteritis, fever, kidney failure, infection and dermatological problems. These diseases can also infect Palestinian adults because of poor water supplies.
"I often get stomach ache. I throw up. It's the same for all the children here," nine-year-old Fatima said.
The waste of Israeli settlers is another problem. In small West Bank villages, such as Jalbun, household, agricultural and industrial waste from Israeli settlements speed up the process of water pollution.
Moreover, some Israeli businessmen and settlers dump toxic waste on Palestinian land in an act of "environmental terrorism", Tamimi says.
The Israeli government defied the international community and a 2004 World Court ruling when it decided to go ahead with the construction of the barrier which poses a humanitarian catastrophe that creates a population of prisoners in their own land.
It seems that Israel is doing everything in its power to prevent a Palestinian state from emerging, and will continue to do so as long as it depends on its powerful allies and an abundant popular indifference.
Re: Israel seizes, pollutes and overexploits Palestinian water
ffended: :grumbling
"1. Qull huwa Allahu ahad Allahu alssamad Lam yalid walam yoolad Walam yakun lahu kufuwan ahad"
Say: He is Allah the One and Only Allah, the Eternal Absolute He begetteth not nor is He begotten And there is none like unto Him.
(112)
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ffended: :grumbling
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