Last night on The Daily Show, Anna Baltzer charged Israel with denying Palestinians access to water. This is what she was talking about, from Amnesty International:
You can read the full report Thirsting for Justice: Palestinian Access to Water Restricted on the Amnesty website.
The same Israeli policies shown in this video are practiced inside Israel against Bedouin and Palestinian villages and towns.
Bedouins have had their lands confiscated. When they attempt to farm their lands, the Israeli Ministry of Interior sprays the crops with herbicides.
As for the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, it is common practice for colonies to direct their sewage pipes downhill toward Palestinian farms and/or villages.
In Gaza, Israel often bombs the sewage processing facility, resulting in sewage water flooding the streets of Gaza. Some neighborhoods were knee deep in the sewage. As a result the sewage contaminated the clean water supply, spreading disease and leaving thousands without clean drinking water.
RE: “Thirsting for justice”
SEE – “Report: Palestinians Denied Water” | BBC News, 10/27/09
(excerpts) Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says. In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
It says that in Gaza, Israel’s blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to “crisis point”…In the 112-page report, Amnesty says that on average Palestinian daily water consumption reaches 70 litres a day, compared with 300 litres for the Israelis. It says that some Palestinians barely get 20 litres a day – the minimum recommended even in humanitarian emergencies.
While Israeli settlers in the West Bank enjoy lush gardens and swimming pools, Amnesty describes a series of Israeli measures it says are discriminating against Palestinians:
> Israel has “entirely appropriated the Palestinians’ share of the Jordan river” and uses 80% of a key shared aquifer
> West Bank Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells without Israeli permits, which are “often impossible” to obtain
> Rainwater harvesting cisterns are “often destroyed by the Israeli army”
> Israeli soldiers confiscated a water tanker from villagers who were trying to remain in land Israel had declared a “closed military area”
> An unnamed Israeli soldier says rooftop Palestinian household water tanks are “good for target practice”
> Much of the land cut off by the West Bank barrier is land with good access to a major aquifer
> Israeli military operations have damaged Palestinian water infrastructure, including $6m worth during the Cast Lead operation in Gaza last winter
> The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza has “exacerbated what was already a dire situation” by denying many building materials needed for water and sewage projects.
…Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said “the idea that we’re taking water away from someone else is simply preposterous”…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to commondreams.org
RE: “Thirsting for justice”
SEE: “Women, elderly among those beaten with Israeli rifle-butts in Hebron”, 19/29/09
Hebron – Ma’an – Ten Palestinians including a 70-year-old woman, seven women and two journalists were attacked by Israeli forces south of Hebron on Thursday, local sources said.
The incident began when Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles demolished a water reservoir belonging to Al-Baqa’a resident Mohammad Mustafa Jaber. Reports from the right-wing Israeli Arutz Sheva said the infrastructure was built by Oxfam and funded by the EU. Oxfam representatives said the claim was being investigated.
During the course of the demolition, the family said the bulldozer also destroyed irrigation networks used for crops….
ENTIRE POST – link to alethonews.blogspot.com
The Zionists are seriously trying to expel the Palestinians from the land south of Hebron, to make room for more racist settlers.
I read one article by a peace activist who had come with a water tanker to a small village, evading Israeli roadblocks set up specifically to block water deliveries. When they arrived and the water put into the water trough for the sheep, they mobbed it, they were so thirsty.
This is a cut and paste from a comment I made at JSF a few days ago. I have ordered a couple of scholarly articles on the subject that are unavailable online.
There are several good studies of the ‘water wars’ between Israel, Syria, Jordan and Egypt leading to the ‘hot’ ’67 war, some analysts even concluding that was the primary basis for conflict. (Water resources were previously shared under the so-called ‘Johnston Plan’, although that program was never ratified.)
link to answers.com
plan
It should be recognized that issues of the security of water resources and inter-state riparian problems of the Jordan River system, including Israel’s heavy dependence on water supply from the underground aquifer that underlies the West Bank, have been some of the reasons why Israel could not withdraw from the areas occupied since 1967. Thus, without resolution of these inter-state water resources problems, no settlement of the PalestineIsrael and Arab-Israel problems can be achieved.
link to unu.edu
80858E0h.htm
Israeli de facto control of S.Lebanon has similar implications.
“According to witnesses in the South, Israel also continues to steal Lebanon’s water, and is altering the Blue Line and shoveling earth to transport to the Israeli side of the border,” the Daily Star reported on September 25. In addition, Israel is adjusting the Blue Line in its favor. “Lebanon has filed a complaint with the UN and UNIFIL about Israeli alterations of the Blue Line in which hundreds of square meters of Lebanese territory were ‘added’ to the Israeli side. UNIFIL ‘is looking into the matter,’ a Lebanese Army source said.”
Indeed, UNIFIL is “looking into the matter” from 500 meters away, through field glasses, and likely nervous about in-coming.
“The Lebanese Army has also filed a complaint with UNIFIL about the Israeli military’s extending pipelines toward the Wazzani River in South Lebanon, possibly in preparation for drawing water into northern Israeli settlements…. Israel was diverting water from the Wazzani before it withdrew from most of the South in 2000…. According to eye witnesses and Lebanese Army statements, the Israelis are also transporting soil from South Lebanese villages and transporting it to Israel.”
link to uruknet.de
l=t
whoops. seems i botched the links.
This is a cut and paste from a comment I made at JSF a few days ago. I have ordered a couple of scholarly articles on the subject that are unavailable online.
There are several good studies of the ‘water wars’ between Israel, Syria, Jordan and Egypt leading to the ‘hot’ ‘67 war, some analysts even concluding that was the primary basis for conflict. (Water resources were previously shared under the so-called ‘Johnston Plan’, although that program was never ratified.)
link to answers.com
plan
It should be recognized that issues of the security of water resources and inter-state riparian problems of the Jordan River system, including Israel’s heavy dependence on water supply from the underground aquifer that underlies the West Bank, have been some of the reasons why Israel could not withdraw from the areas occupied since 1967. Thus, without resolution of these inter-state water resources problems, no settlement of the PalestineIsrael and Arab-Israel problems can be achieved.
link to unu.edu
80858E0h.htm
Israeli de facto control of S.Lebanon has similar implications.
“According to witnesses in the South, Israel also continues to steal Lebanon’s water, and is altering the Blue Line and shoveling earth to transport to the Israeli side of the border,” the Daily Star reported on September 25. In addition, Israel is adjusting the Blue Line in its favor. “Lebanon has filed a complaint with the UN and UNIFIL about Israeli alterations of the Blue Line in which hundreds of square meters of Lebanese territory were ‘added’ to the Israeli side. UNIFIL ‘is looking into the matter,’ a Lebanese Army source said.”
Indeed, UNIFIL is “looking into the matter” from 500 meters away, through field glasses, and likely nervous about in-coming.
“The Lebanese Army has also filed a complaint with UNIFIL about the Israeli military’s extending pipelines toward the Wazzani River in South Lebanon, possibly in preparation for drawing water into northern Israeli settlements…. Israel was diverting water from the Wazzani before it withdrew from most of the South in 2000…. According to eye witnesses and Lebanese Army statements, the Israelis are also transporting soil from South Lebanese villages and transporting it to Israel.”
link to uruknet.de
l=t
How’s Richard Witty’s water supply doing? I do hope he’s getting a basic fitered supply
here in his USA bunker.
Heeey! Don’t worry about Witty’s water supply, man. It’s cool. He’s a Zionist! If he can’t get it here, he can simply go over to his “homeland” and siphon it out from under the Palestinians. It’s a steal! Literally.
I am afraid that it is a bit more than trying to drive people out when you deny them water in a region like this – no one survives without water. What does that tell you?
The region has been suffering from severe drought. The idea that anyone in such a region, under such conditions, would destroy reservoirs is blasphemous.
I’ll tell you what it reminds me of.
“In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum – for a Großdeutschland, land, and raw materials – and that it should be taken in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, Germanise or enslave the Polish, and later also Russian and other Slavic populations, and to repopulate the land with reinrassig (racially pure) Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.”
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Water management is a problem that is occurring in MANY locales throughout the world. And, the issue of one person, one group, one community, one purpose having access to water over another is a critical aspect of nearly all the discussions.
Even where fresh water is not scarce, it happens mostly between uses. So, for example, fishermen/women fight with utilities over damning for electricity, or flood control, farmers fight with each for water and for effluent “rights”, municipalities fight with others over siting of waste disposal and water purification, industry fights over the “right” to exhaust effluents.
The ONLY way water issues can be resolved is cooperatively and by negotiation and/or legislation. Water issues are regional, larger even than the jurisdiction questions of river to sea.
As such, regional approaches must be included in the process, which means trustable communications and commitments.
Israel trustable, Syria trustable.
As an industrialized area/community, Israel has more responsibility to make sure that water is purified. It is also a public health concern even just for Israelis, if neighbors don’t have access to clean water, as airborne contagious and non-contagious diseases may spread into Israel.
And, if the status of a healthy neighbor relative to a healthy neighbor has any merit, then sufficient fresh water is needed for all.
Water is already an economic good, meaning that it is a commodity that has a market price. That status from free good to market good has already occurred. The water table has already sunk, aquifers are already somewhat polluted (largely from the sinking water tables).
And, it is BOTH Israeli and Palestinian population stresses on the eco-region that have led to that. But, in the “demographic war”, population control is NOTa virtue.
Witty? This isn’t about a diplomatic taling point. ISRAEL IS STEALING WATER. More to the point, Israelis are not only illegally settled in on Palestinian land in the West Bank, they have private swimming pools and green grass lawns and use four times as much water as Palestinians (at least), while Palestinian agriculture is not only under attack by settlers pogroms, but also the IDF destroying Palestinian reservoirs.
Do you not care? Do you seriously not care about the human cost? Really? Are you that callous and heartless and sociopathic?
An excerpt from an article by Ronald Bleier of Middle East Labor Bulletin, written in 1994 when Jeffrey Blankfort was its editor.
Palestinian hopes for genuine self-determination hinge on a number of factors, not the least of which is Israel’s ability to solve its perennial and growing water shortage. According to Dr. Hussein A. Amery, of the Department of Geography, Bishop’s University, Quebec, Israel uses 17% more than the 1.9 billion cubic meters of water that is renewable from natural sources.
“The deficit in water supply is being met by desalinating brackish salty waters, recycling waste water and over- pumping underground waters.” (“Israel’s designs on Lebanese water,” MEI, 10 September 93 [No. 458] p. 18.)
But these facts and figures don’t address the question of equity. Arguably 50% or more of the water that Israel uses is unilaterally appropriated from water that should fairly go to its Arab neighbors. Even the New York Times used the word “theft” when quoting an “Arab” in connection with Israel’s appropriation of regional water resources. (“Hurdle to Peace: Parting the Mideast’s Waters” by Alan Cowell NYT, 10.10.93 p. 1)
link to desip.igc.org
More on the background of regional water disputes:
Several regional water-sharing proposals [after Israel's founding] failed in part because Israel linked them to recognizing the Jewish state. It also rejected solutions not in its strategic interest and acted unilaterally instead. Take its National Water Carrier project. Construction began in the late 1950s and early 1960s and became the country’s largest water project – to transfer Sea of Galilee northern water to highly populated areas in the center and south and to facilitate efficient water use. To neighboring Arab states, however, it was a hostile act, and they responded with their own diversion plans. Israel viewed them as a national security threat.
Confrontation followed. The National Water Carrier was targeted. Israel retaliated against Syrian construction sites. Skirmishes broke out, and the 1967 war resulted. Officially it began on June 5, 1967. Others, including Ariel Sharon, said it started two and a half years earlier when Israel acted against diverting the Jordan River. Earlier, Ben-Gurion warned that Jews and Arabs would battle over strategic water resources and determine Palestine’s fate. Its people as well. Aside from other strategic aims for land and regional control, Israel secured water rich lands in southern Lebanon, Jordan, the Golan, and West Bank. It fully exploited them and is a key reason why the Golan was never returned. West Bank water is another issue. It has three principle aquifers supplying about one-quarter of Israel’s needs, including for its settlements and nearly all of what West Bank Palestinians get.
link to globalpolicy.org
Is it fair to assign Palestinians any blame for a water shortage, when, per the video, they consume less than the WHO’s necessary minimum amount of water?
As the video makes clear, this is an issue of fundamental discrimination and abuse (forcing a population to live like animals on insufficient or filthy water).