First they took the houses. Then they took the lands. Then they took the sh-t.
I heard this story when I was in East Jerusalem earlier this month and couldn’t believe it. It was explained to me that Israel has several sewage processing plants that turn sewage into water for agricultural use. The plants take Palestinian sewage and are supposed to return the water to the Palestinians in the West Bank. But they don’t return all of what they get.
Now I’m back, here’s the documentation. First from a report by Ewash, a consortium of groups that work on water and sanitation issues in the West Bank, then a friend’s summary.
Here is documentation of this theft from Ewash:
In 2002, the Israeli Ministry of Finance began to deduct wastewater treatment plant construction, operation and maintenance costs from Palestinian tax revenues collected and held by Israel. These monies go to pay for treatment of West Bank wastewater, which is then often re-used for Israeli agriculture. Palestinians have no access to the treated wastewater. Israel has claimed costs as far back as 1996 without agreement from the Palestinian authorities. It has built five wastewater treatment plants for Israeli use in the OPT using Palestinian funds. These are HaGilboa (Jenin), Yad Hanna-Emek Hefer (Tulkarem), Drom HaSharon (Qalqilya), HaGihon (Bir Nibala, Al-Jib, Al-Ram, Al-Ezzeriyah) and Shoket (Hebron).
My friend:
Israel deducted in excess of 200 million shekels of tax money from the Palestinian Authority without authorization since 2002 to build and operate wastewater treatment plants inside Israel right by the green line to treat Palestinian water and then reuse it for its own agriculture (Israel has a reputation of high rate of water reuse, little do people know some of it is stolen).
To put this into perspective, Israel already takes 90% of the water from the WB aquifers, forcing Palestinians to buy over half of their water from Israel but Israel then takes wastewater from major Palestinian cities (Jenin, Tul Karem, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Hebron) and reuses that water, so there is a net transfer of water from Palestinians to Israel despite the shocking discrepancy in access. On the other hand, Israel prevents Palestinians from building their own wastewater treatment plants (only a small one in the whole of the West Bank, second one being built now but nowhere near enough to serve 2.5 million people).
Well, in the interest of supporting the Jewish State, I volunteer to donate all my shit to Israel.
On the other hand, Israel prevents Palestinians from building their own wastewater treatment plants
I know, I mentioned Gil Ayal before, but this should be read in connection with his chapter V, The discourse about the Arab Village
It seems important from an Israeli view to uphold the image of the bright and brilliant, the culturally superior versus the backward Arabs. Preventing Palestinians to go to the US to study somehow tells us a similar tale.
This is no surprise. Every year and every initiative toward providing water for Palestine has been prevented by Israel, stolen and turned to Israel’s use. The international community has poured hundreds of millions into projects and repairs of infrastructure destroyed by Israel for Palestine time after time, and yet every time Israel either destroys them again as they did the Gaza sewage and power plants in the 2008 assault or diverts the project money and results to its own use. Is it impossible to estimate what Israel has cost the world.
From National Geographic
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/parting-the-waters/belt-text/2
“Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has built a few dozen settlements in the Jordan Valley, in addition to the 120 or so elsewhere in the West Bank. The settlers’ water is provided by Mekorot, Israel’s national water authority, which has drilled 42 deep wells in the West Bank, mainly to supply Israeli cities. (According to a 2009 World Bank report, Israelis use four times as much water per capita as Palestinians, much of it for agriculture.
In contrast, West Bank Palestinians, under Israeli military rule, have been largely prevented from digging deep wells of their own, limiting their water access to shallow wells, natural springs, and rainfall that evaporates quickly in the dry desert air. When these sources run dry in the summer, Palestinians have no choice but to purchase water from Israel for about a dollar a cubic yard—in effect buying back the water that’s been taken out from under them by Mekorot’s pumps, which also lower the water table and affect Palestinian springs and wells.
As Bromberg and I followed the Auja spring east, we passed a complex of pumps and pipes behind a barbed-wire fence—a Mekorot well, drilled 2,000 feet deep to tap the aquifer. “Blue and white pipes,” Bromberg said. “This is what water theft looks like in this part of the world.”
In the past five decades the Jordan has lost more than 90 percent of its normal flow. Upstream, at the Sea of Galilee, the river’s fresh waters are diverted via Israel’s National Water Carrier to the cities and farms of Israel, while dams built by Jordan and Syria claim a share of the river’s tributaries, mostly for agriculture. So today the lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste that ranges from raw sewage to agricultural runoff, fed into the river’s vein like some murky infusion of tainted blood.
When I returned to Auja in early May, its spring had been reduced to a trickle, leaving the village as dry as a fistful of talcum powder. The fields around it lay empty and exhausted, while on Auja’s one plot of flat ground, boys were playing soccer amid a swirling dust cloud they were kicking up, chasing an old leather ball worn to the consistency of flannel.
I stopped by the home of an elderly farmer named Muhammad Salama. “We haven’t had running water in my house for five weeks,” Salama said. “So now I have to buy a tank of water every day from Mekorot to supply my family and to water my sheep, goats, and horses.” He also has to buy feed for his animals because there is no water to irrigate crops. To meet these costs he is selling off his livestock, and his sons have taken jobs at an Israeli settlement, tending the tomatoes, melons, and other crops irrigated from the aquifer that is off-limits to Palestinian farmers. “What can we do?” he asked, pouring me a glass of Mekorot water from a plastic bottle. “It’s not fair, but we’re powerless to do anything about it.”
It was a clear day, and from his front window we could see across the parched, brown valley all the way to the thin line of gray-green vegetation marking the path of the Jordan River. For a moment, its water seemed within reach. “But to get there I’d have to jump an electric fence, cross a minefield, and fight the Israeli army,” Salama said. ”
In the West Bank at an average sustainable rate, the amount of renewable shared freshwater available throughout the entire Jordan Valley is roughly 2700 million cubic metres per year, out of which 1400 million cubic metres per year comes from groundwater and 1300 million cubic metres per year from surface water.[15] However, only a fraction of this can be used by Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel has denied Palestinians access to the entire Lower Jordan River since 1967. After the start of Israel’s military occupation in 1967, Israel declared the West Bank land adjacent to the Jordan River a closed military zone, to which only Israeli settler farmers have been permitted access.[16] Groundwater resources include two main aquifers: The highly productive mountain aquifer that slopes towards the more rainy West, and the less productive Eastern aquifer located under the drier part of the West Bank. Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells into the mountain aquifer. Most of its water thus flows underground towards the slopes of the hills and into Israeli territory. According to different estimates, between 80 and 85% of groundwater in the West Bank is used either by Israeli settlers or flows into Israel.
After the assault on Gaza in 2008-09 the World Bank reported the destruction of the water and sanitation infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Almost all sewage and water pumps were out of operation due to a lack of electricity and fuel. Spare parts and other maintenance supplies were in urgent need to be replenished. This situation resulted in a serious shortage of water and sewage overflows in urban areas, posing a threat to public health.
According to a 2009 report by Amnesty International, some 180,000-200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water and “the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater.
The 450,000 settlers use as much or more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians. Many Palestinians have to buy water, of often dubious quality, from tanker trucks at very high prices. Water tankers are forced to take long detours to avoid Israeli military checkpoints and roads which are out of bounds to Palestinians, resulting in steep increases in the price of water. According to Amnesty International, the Israeli army also destroys rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates water trucks.
Gaza has a well designed Master Plan for water and sanitation, but less than 2% of the investment
program has been implemented. The Plan provided for an integrated production and conveyance
system, and a major expansion of wastewater treatment capacity, including three new plants. It
has proved impossible to implement the Plan under emergency closure conditions. By November
2008, with the deterioration in the political and security situation, less than 2% of the investment
program was being implemented. Even small relief projects had to be abandoned across the
board, due to Israel’s occupation blocked imports of materials, while hardly any international contractor is prepared
to work in Gaza. All conditions worsened with the December 2008/January 2009 Israeli military
offensive on Gaza.
From the World Bank
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWESTBANKGAZA/Resources/WaterRestrictionsReportJuly2009.pdf
‘Palestinians have access to one fifth of the resources of the Mountain Aquifer. Palestinians
abstract about 20% of the “estimated potential” of the aquifers that underlie both the West Bank
and Israel. Israel abstracts the balance, and in addition overdraws without JWC approval on the
“estimated potential” by more than 50%, up to 1.8 times its share under Oslo. Over-extraction by
deep wells combined with reduced recharge has created risks for the aquifers and a decline in
water available to Palestinians through shallower wells. (Chapter 1)
Water withdrawals per head of the Palestinian population have been declining, and there are real
water shortages. Palestinian abstractions have actually declined over the last ten years, under the
combined effect of dropping water tables and restricted drilling, deepening and rehabilitation of
wells. Water withdrawals per capita for Palestinians in the West Bank are about one quarter of
those available to Israelis, and have declined over the last decade. By regional standards,
Palestinians have the lowest access to fresh water resources.'”
I don’t know about others but I am tired of messing around with the Apartheid charge when it’s as clear as day that Israel is and always has been engaged in Genocide. So let’s call it what it is.
Start saying Genocide, Genocide, Genocide…loud and clear.
http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/elements.htm
Elements of the Crime of Genocide
From the Report of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court, 6 July 2000
Articles 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 and Article II of the the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of 1948
Crime:
Genocide by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.
1. The perpetrator inflicted certain conditions of life upon one or more persons.
Note: The term “conditions of life” may include, but is not necessarily restricted to, deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food or medical services, or systematic expulsion from homes.
2. The conditions of life were calculated to bring about the physical destruction of that group, in whole or in part.
3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.
4. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.
Note: The term “in the context of” would include the initial acts in an emerging pattern; – The term “manifest” is an objective qualification .
Final draft text of the Elements of Crimes, agreed upon by the ICC.
it is worth mentioning every time:
israel plans to control and keep ALL natural water sources and only provide Palestinians artificial sources (desalination plants which can have parts withheld or be bombed) … no viable society can survive without dedicated natural resources such as water – israel’s plans are inhuman and illegal and cannot stand