Thirst In The Palestinian Territories

The water crisis has started early this year in the Palestinian Territories. In scores of towns and villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, people listen eagerly for the gurgle of water in pipelines, and turn on their taps with trepidation, watching anxiously for the first drops to appear, waiting to see if they turn into a stream, or splutter and gurgle to nothing after a few seconds. Others watch and wait for the arrival of water tankers, transporting the life-giving liquid to them from distant sources across an obstacle course of road blocks, checkpoints and military closures put in place by the Israeli Authorities, an inherent feature of their ongoing military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian Territories.

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Palestinians wait, but on the other side of the Wall, in Israel and in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, it is another story. Sprinklers play over green lawns, flowers bloom in well-kept gardens, children play in swimming pools, people are able to take two showers a day, and for the vast majority, the water crisis does not exist, or exists only in an abstract sense, as a hazy awareness that Israel is located in one of the most arid regions on earth. The reality of water scarcity that haunts the Palestinians scarcely touches most Israelis, and in addition, Israel is able to maintain a multi-billion dollar agricultural sector, that exports water intensive crops (such as avocados, citrus fruits and herbs) to Europe, an activity that essentially amounts to exporting water.

[...]

The somewhat unpalatable truth of the matter is that every year, a water crisis is manufactured in the Palestinian Territories due to Israeli monopolization of water resources and hampering of Palestinian water development. The total yield of the Mountain Aquifer, the Coastal Aquifer and the Jordan River system (the three main water resources for Palestinians and Israelis) is approximately 1720 million cubic metres of water per year on an average year, of which Israel uses some 1444 million cubic metres, leaving a mere 275 million cubic metres for the Palestinians.

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