Linda Young - AHN Editor
Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - Human rights group Amnesty International has released a report critical of Israel for failing to provide Palestinians with access to even a minimum amount of clean water in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Amnesty International accused Israel of maintaining total control of water resources and practicing discriminatory water allocation policies. Amnesty pointed out that Israel uses more than 80 percent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, which is one of many water resources for Israel but the only water source for Palestinians.
Water resources are part of the final negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel hotly disputes the report that faults the Israeli government for hogging the lion's share of water from the aquifer flowing under Palestinian lands. In addition, Israel responded by saying that it was actually giving the Palestinians more water than it legally had to and that many Palestinians dug illegal wells.
Amnesty pointed out that Palestinian daily water consumption is barely 70 liters a day per person while Israeli daily consumption is about four times as much, more than 300 liters per day. In addition, some Palestinians in rural communities have only 20 liters per day, which is the minimum amount of water recommended for use during times of emergencies.
In addition, Amnesty said that Israeli soldiers have confiscated Palestinian water tankers and destroyed rooftop water tanks on homes. During the military attack on Gaza earlier this year, Israeli soldiers damaged $6 million of Palestinian water infrastructure and have since hindered delivery of building materials and supplies to rebuild. In rural areas, Israeli soldiers often prevent Palestinians who have no access to running water from even collecting rainwater and destroy their cisterns, the group said.
The Israeli Water Authority disputed the report and said it had provided the Palestinian Authority with more water than was stipulated to under the Oslo accord. It also disputed the figures on the amount of water daily allocated to Palestinians.
In addition, the Israeli Water Authority emphasized that negotiations of Palestinian water rights were one of the final-status issues that Israel and the Palestinian Authority will negotiate someday and that it was unlikely that any final changes to allocation of water resources would be done outside the context of those future negotiations. The Water Authority faulted Amnesty for calling for Israel to divide the water sources up now and end water use discrimination against Palestinians that favors settlers.
The situation has prevented Palestinians from developing a water infrastructure, which has hampered farmers trying to grow food, even for personal use, while Israeli settlements in the West Bank, illegal under international law, have swimming pools, lush gardens and irrigate crops in the midday sun, Amnesty said.
"Over more than 40 years of occupation, restrictions imposed by Israel on the Palestinians' access to water have prevented the development of water infrastructure and facilities in the OPT, consequently denying hundreds of thousand of Palestinians the right to live a normal life, to have adequate food, housing, or health, and to economic development," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's researcher on Israel and the (OPT) Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In the occupied West Bank, for instance, the 450,000 Israeli settlers use as much or more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians living there, Amnesty said.
Amnesty pointed out that as an occupying force, Israel has a responsibility to ensure the human rights of the Palestinians.
"Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford," said Rovera.
"Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians' access to water," she said, "and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources."
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