out of the Palestinian water
sector, abandoning ongoing
projects and closing their contactors offices, in an international aid embargo aimed at
undermining the Hamas government.
As with so many international sanctions and embargoes (like Iraq for example),
the result of this move is the
communal punishment of
every man, woman and child
in the country targeted.
It is a clumsy, inept and
immoral means of pressuring
the government to fall into
Line; and primarily hurts the
most vulnerable members of
the society.
The options for improving
the water situation in Gaza
remain effectively unchanged
since 2000. Namely, additional supplies must be made
available: through desalination, wastewater treatment
and reuse, import from Israel,
or import from the West
Bank. Currently, the unstable
conditions in the Gaza Strip
make large scale engineering projects impossible to implement.
The less technically difficult options of water import from Israel or the West Bank are loaded with political implications and complexities.
Both require the cooperation of Israel to ensure their implementation as additional pipelines would need to be constructed, and in the first case, the Israeli water company, Mekorot, would have to supply the water; whereas in the second, a pipeline would have to be constructed across Israeli territory. Furthermore, an agreement would have to be reached on Palestinian water rights in the West Bank.
The water situation in the West Bank is almost the exact inverse of Gaza, in that there are relatively abundant water resources in the Mountain Aquifer system and Jordan River, but there is very little access to or sovereignty over them.
This is due to the fact that Palestinians have been denied any access to the Jordan River waters since 1967, and 80% of the Mountain Aquifer water is utilized by Israel, which is downstream of the West Bank in terms of water usage.
Thus control over water resources was very tight during the Israeli administration (1967 - 1995), with only 23 licenses being granted for new wells, and the number of working wells, In fact, decreasing from 413 in 1967, to 300 by 1983.
Many communities in the West Bank currently suffer from severe water shortages, and 13% of the West Bank population is not connected to any form of water network. The Oslo Agreements of the 1990s deferred definition of Palestinian water rights in the West Bank to "final status negotiations," which have yet to take place. Crisis of Dependency
Thus resolution of Palestine's water problems is utterly dependent on cooperation from Israel; and inaction will lead to a serious environmental disaster in Gaza and to continued suffering for many water starved communities in the West Bank. Water shortage also undermines the agricultural sector and prevents it from developing, with consequences for the food security and economic well-being of the Palestinian population.
When considering the likelihood of cooperation being forthcoming from Israel, it is worth reviewing several statements that have been made by Israel's leaders in recent years.
Yitzhak Rabin, former Labor Party Prime Minister, during his tenure as Israeli Minister of Defense, in the 1980s, stated that
"Israel will create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years, conditions which Palestinians have been denied any access to the Jordan River waters since 1967, and 80% of the Mountain Aquifer water is utilized by Israel, which is downstream of the West Bank
would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to Jordan."
It may be that Rabin had
changed his mind by the time he made the historic move of shaking hands with Yasser
Aratat and legitimizing the Palestinian Authority.
It is possible, although various features of the Oslo Accords, such as the minimal transfer of sovereignty over environmental resources would suggest otherwise. It is possible. No one can tell what Israel and Palestine would have looked like today if Rabin had not been assassinated by a far right Jewish extremist.
However, if Rabin no longer believed in transfer of the West Bank and Gazan populations, Ariel Sharon, architect of the Gaza Disengagement Plan certainly did. Many years ago he explained that "You don't simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away. I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave."
Olmert, Sharon's heir, has also recently avowed his commitment to the ideal of 'Eretz Israel' saying that Only a person in whose soul Eretz Yisrael burns knows the pain of letting go of our ancestral heritage;" and explaining: "I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land."
What can be perceived here is that many of Israel's leaders, while appearing to make concessions to the Palestinians, have in fact retained an ideological commitment to 'Eretz Israel from the river to the sea, and have concentrated their policy towards creating "facts on the ground' that will make life for the Palestinians impossible, hence creating the 'positive conditions required to induce people to leave. Creating MiniGazas
A close examination of the Gazan water crisis illustrates this point very well. If nothing is done, there will be no usable water resources in Gaza and it will become impossible to Live there. Nothing can be done without Israeli cooperation.
Thus, whilst Israel may not have intentionally set out to create the Gaza water crisis, it fits in rather well with Zionist expansionist aspirations to perpetuate the situation and prevent meaningful action being taken to resolve it.
If one examines the process that is taking place in the West Bank, whereby a series
intervention is required to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people and prevent
humanitarian and
environmental disaster.
of Bantustans are being created through land confiscation, settlement expansion
and the building of the
"Separation Barrier," with the
population becoming
more urbanized, and access to
resources such as water and
land becoming CVCH more
restricted, it is possible to see
that what in effect is happening is the creation of a number
of "mini Gazas."
To illustrate this point: the building of the Wall in the north of the West Bank led to the destruction of 25 wells and the isolation of 50 more, isolating many localities from their only source of water and destroying the irrigated farming industry.
One estimate anticipates that when completed, the Wall will isolate Palestinians from 65% of their water resources (CAABU, 2003), although so much uncertainty surrounds its final route that no solid predictions can be made.
Thus a number of highly urbanized communities will be created, with poor economic and social conditions and inadequate resources to sustain themselves.
This is the manifestation of Sharon's "positive policy," which essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing by other means, causing widespread suffering, illness and death.
It is clear that the viability of the Palestinian state and the livelihoods of the Palestinian people are being systematically undermined.
The situation is not yet so far gone that it is irreversible. However, given the advantages to Israel of allowing the current state of affairs to persist, and the urgency of immediate action to avert catastrophe in Gaza, it is clear that international intervention is required to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people and prevent humanitarian and environmental disaster.