Description

A Mekorot Water Co. station. Photo by Eliyahu Hershkovitz

Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)

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Water discrimination is another tool being used to wear down the Palestinians socially and politically.

By Amira Hass for Haaretz

Why is the Israeli establishment so bent on denying the existence of water discrimination? Because this time the Israeli establishment cannot wrap it in the usual security excuses it resorts to with other sorts of blatant discrimination.

When it comes to the water situation, the Israeli propaganda machine and its helpers, the Zionist lobbies in the Diaspora, are in big trouble. As was clearly shown when the German Martin Schulz had the audacity to inquire in the Knesset – that den of traffickers in the Holocaust – if the rumor he had heard was true [he queried whether Israelis were allotted four times as much water as Palestinians].

The systematic discrimination in water allocations to the Palestinians is no false rumor. Israelis’ water welfare is not dependent upon it, but without it the whole settlement enterprise would be way more expensive, and perhaps even impossible to sustain in its current and planned scope.

No wonder Habayit Hayehudi, the party most identified with the settlers, reacted so furiously to Schulz’s remarks and walked out of the Knesset.

Water discrimination is another governmental tool being used to wear down the Palestinians socially and politically.

In the West Bank, tens of thousands of families expend huge amounts of time, money and emotional and physical energy just to take care of basic things like showers, laundry, and washing floors and dishes. When there’s no water in the toilet cistern, even family visits become rare.

Families in the Jordan Valley haul drinking water in tanks from long distances, and furtively – lest they be discovered by the Civil Administration – while they live right near the Mekorot Water Company’s pipelines that convey plentiful water to settlement farms growing herbs for export.

Gaza, just on the other side of the late Ariel Sharon's Sycamore Ranch and Kibbutz Be’eri, is dependent upon water purification plants that guzzle electricity – often in short supply; it might as well be India.

The time, money and energy that go into obtaining water come at the expense of other things on both the personal and community level: enrichment classes for the children, a computer, family outings, industrial development projects, tourism development, organic agriculture, political and social activity.

While the Palestinians know that Israel is responsible for the water shortage, their anger is directed at the more accessible lightning rod – the Palestinian Authority.

And the employees of the Palestinian water authority, who spend their days in wearying battle with the Israeli occupation bureaucracy to obtain approval for every water pipe, are regarded as uncaring, unprofessional and inefficient. How convenient.

The reality of disjointed Palestinian enclaves that Israel is creating is emerging – through a different patchwork of laws and to different extents on either side of the Green Line – from the seizure of land and water sources, and the denial of freedom of movement.

The religion of security, which is used to justify the land theft, checkpoints and blockade, has yet to come up with an explanation for why a Palestinian child is entitled to less water than a Jewish child.

What can the public diplomacy experts say? That in Jenin the average per-capita allocation is 38 liters for home consumption, because the city is a stronghold of Islamic Jihad, which threatens our small country? That in the summer there is no regular water supply because the Shin Bet security service is busy uncovering cells of armed militants, and that in Gaza, more than 90 percent of the water is unfit for drinking because the Hamas chiefs are planning terrorist attacks in the West Bank?

Even the Jewish communities most dedicated to Israel will have a hard time justifying the discrepancies. And so the establishment has come up with a four-part plan of attack:

1. Bombard the media with partial and faulty statistics;

2. Blur the starting point: Israel controls the water sources. Based on the temporary Oslo Accords, which has since become permanent, the Palestinians are limited in the amount of water they are permitted to independently extract from these sources and in the improvements they can make in the water infrastructure;

3. Rely on the Israeli home front, which dismisses Palestinian reports and ignores reports from organizations such as B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and the documentary film “The Fading Valley” from Irit Gal, and studies published by the World Bank and Amnesty International;

4. Count on most Israelis not troubling to just take a look for themselves at the actual situation. And if they do, and find there to be outrageous discrimination, then count on them saying, “So what?”

________


‘NY Times’ and ‘LA Times’ run op-eds by an AIPAC board member without telling readers

by Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss for Mondoweiss

Last month the LA Times ran a cute test on its op-ed page to show that Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, and that Palestinians are treated very well by Israel.

Today the NY Times runs an op-ed saying that Israel gives Palestinians all the water they need, and as the region dries out, Palestinians are going to feel very lucky. Doing damage control after last weeks massive brouhaha pulled by Naftali Bennett (w/his party MKs in tow) during EU president Martin Schulz’s Knesset address? Your guess is as good as ours.

Both pieces are by Seth M. Siegel– a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank, the NY Times says. The LA Times also mentions Beanstalk, and says Siegel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Neither the LA Times nor the NY Times tells you that Siegel serves on the national board of AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby organization.

More on that water story:

Siegel, who specializes in “extending brands through the strategic and creative development,” has got his work cut out for him cleaning up Israel’s sewage, literally. His New York Times Op-Ed Israeli Water, Mideast Peace? reads like a love letter for Israeli innovation.

According to Siegel, Palestinians are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to water:

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race.

The West Bank settlement of Ariel sits on a major aquifer, on Palestinian land!

According to Siegel, Israel is “a model” and has “mastered the management of water resources”:

Israel also treats household sewage as a precious resource, reusing more than 80 percent of it for agriculture. In Iran and many Arab countries, sewage is dumped, which can threaten public health by contaminating wells and aquifers.

Iran? Wait a second. Sewage is being dumped in Palestine too– by Israeli settlers.

Here’s a taste of the reality . . . Harvest of excrement: colonists in Occupied Territories pump sewage on to Palestinian farm land.

July 29, 2011 Ein Yabrud, northeast of Ramallah: State authorities stole private Palestinian land and used it to build a waste facility based on a fictitious permit, for the benefit of the nearby settlement of Ofra.

August 7, 2012, Palestinians say “The bad odor is constant here and nowadays it has become normal to find rodents and insects in this area” because Israeli settlement waste contaminates the environment:

staring at the smelly polluted water flowing less than 10 meters from the houses of his village located between Salfit and Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank – “It’s not only about the smell. In the village a lot of people suffer from skin diseases, asthmas, and other illnesses.” The waste water stemming from Ariel settlement has played a major role in the contamination of water and in the pollution of the environment in the Salfit area. Due to the concentration of pollutant elements in this zone, many agricultural fields have been destroyed and many animals and plants have been killed. Moreover, many infectious waterborne diseases, like diarrhea, have broken out especially among children.

The inhabitants of Wadi Fukin and Nahalin, south-west of Bethlehem, face the same problems. Surrounded by the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit, these two villages, known for the quality of the agricultural products, are constantly threatened by the flow of waste water coming from the nearby settlement. “Inside Beitar Illit there is a waste water treatment facility but it can’t handle the amount of waste water it receives and as a consequence it overflows reversing untreated waste water onto the agricultural fields” explains Dib Najajrah, a resident of Wadi Fukin. “Moreover, in the last years the settlers have started attacking our crops by deliberately pumping the waste water coming out of the settlement into the cultivated land of Nahalin.”


‘NY Times’ and ‘LA Times’ run op-eds by an AIPAC board member without telling readers
Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss on February 17, 2014 45

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Last month the LA Times ran a cute test on its op-ed page to show that Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, and that Palestinians are treated very well by Israel.

Today the NY Times runs an op-ed saying that Israel gives Palestinians all the water they need, and as the region dries out, Palestinians are going to feel very lucky. Doing damage control after last weeks massive brouhaha pulled by Naftali Bennett (w/his party MKs in tow) during EU president Martin Schulz’s Knesset address? Your guess is as good as ours.

Both pieces are by Seth M. Siegel– a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank, the NY Times says. The LA Times also mentions Beanstalk, and says Siegel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Neither the LA Times nor the NY Times tells you that Siegel serves on the national board of AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby organization.

More on that water story:

Siegel, who specializes in “extending brands through the strategic and creative development,” has got his work cut out for him cleaning up Israel’s sewage, literally. His New York Times Op-Ed Israeli Water, Mideast Peace? reads like a love letter for Israeli innovation.

According to Siegel, Palestinians are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to water:

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race.

The West Bank settlement of Ariel sits on a major aquifer, on Palestinian land!

According to Siegel, Israel is “a model” and has “mastered the management of water resources”:

Israel also treats household sewage as a precious resource, reusing more than 80 percent of it for agriculture. In Iran and many Arab countries, sewage is dumped, which can threaten public health by contaminating wells and aquifers.

Iran? Wait a second. Sewage is being dumped in Palestine too– by Israeli settlers.

Here’s a taste of the reality . . . Harvest of excrement: colonists in Occupied Territories pump sewage on to Palestinian farm land.

July 29, 2011 Ein Yabrud, northeast of Ramallah: State authorities stole private Palestinian land and used it to build a waste facility based on a fictitious permit, for the benefit of the nearby settlement of Ofra.

August 7, 2012, Palestinians say “The bad odor is constant here and nowadays it has become normal to find rodents and insects in this area” because Israeli settlement waste contaminates the environment:
Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)

Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)



staring at the smelly polluted water flowing less than 10 meters from the houses of his village located between Salfit and Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank – “It’s not only about the smell. In the village a lot of people suffer from skin diseases, asthmas, and other illnesses.” The waste water stemming from Ariel settlement has played a major role in the contamination of water and in the pollution of the environment in the Salfit area. Due to the concentration of pollutant elements in this zone, many agricultural fields have been destroyed and many animals and plants have been killed. Moreover, many infectious waterborne diseases, like diarrhea, have broken out especially among children.

The inhabitants of Wadi Fukin and Nahalin, south-west of Bethlehem, face the same problems. Surrounded by the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit, these two villages, known for the quality of the agricultural products, are constantly threatened by the flow of waste water coming from the nearby settlement. “Inside Beitar Illit there is a waste water treatment facility but it can’t handle the amount of waste water it receives and as a consequence it overflows reversing untreated waste water onto the agricultural fields” explains Dib Najajrah, a resident of Wadi Fukin. “Moreover, in the last years the settlers have started attacking our crops by deliberately pumping the waste water coming out of the settlement into the cultivated land of Nahalin.”

Nov 18, 2012 Gaza:

an Israeli air strike hit a water distribution truck in Beit Lahia, destroying it completely and killing the driver Suhail Hamada and his son.

“I have approximately two days stock of drinking water and food,” Mahmoud Sa’adallah, 32, resident of Bait Lahia and a father of five says, “we will have no option but to drink the municipal water which is too salty”. Mahmoud doesn’t know how his children are going to survive in the coming days with the lack of basic necessities if the offensive continues. “My brother and neighbors, for whom the vendor was coming, have already started to drink from the tap”.

The vast majority of the residents of the Gaza strip rely on purchasing desalinated water from private vendors as piped water coming from Gaza’s sole source of fresh water, is too contaminated with chemicals. [1]

From last March. Settler sewage destroys agricultural lands. “Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village”:

Land in village of Qusin used as garbage dump by settlers
ISM 27 Mar by IWPS — On Wednesday March 27 at 15:00 the village of Qusin organized a tour of a nearby quarry that is regularly used as a garbage dump. The residents of Qusin invited the Minister of the Environment, IWPS and the International Solidarity Movement to inspect the amount of Israeli trash that has accumulated in the recent weeks. The quarry had been partially refilled with dirt and gravel covering the majority of the trash, leaving three large piles of plastic, wood and metal exposed. The effect was that of a large land fill in the middle of a mined industrial zone. The organizers of the visit explained that the toxins from the trash are seeping through the soil into the water sources of the nearby villages, endangering the local residents. Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village. Residents of Qusin have started to regularly visit and protest as a community at the dump site.

Also last year, from Sebastia: Sewage flows from the nearby settlement of Shavei Shomron. Palestinians demonstrate against sewage settlers spill onto their land.


‘NY Times’ and ‘LA Times’ run op-eds by an AIPAC board member without telling readers
Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss on February 17, 2014 45

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Google

Last month the LA Times ran a cute test on its op-ed page to show that Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, and that Palestinians are treated very well by Israel.

Today the NY Times runs an op-ed saying that Israel gives Palestinians all the water they need, and as the region dries out, Palestinians are going to feel very lucky. Doing damage control after last weeks massive brouhaha pulled by Naftali Bennett (w/his party MKs in tow) during EU president Martin Schulz’s Knesset address? Your guess is as good as ours.

Both pieces are by Seth M. Siegel– a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank, the NY Times says. The LA Times also mentions Beanstalk, and says Siegel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Neither the LA Times nor the NY Times tells you that Siegel serves on the national board of AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby organization.

More on that water story:

Siegel, who specializes in “extending brands through the strategic and creative development,” has got his work cut out for him cleaning up Israel’s sewage, literally. His New York Times Op-Ed Israeli Water, Mideast Peace? reads like a love letter for Israeli innovation.

According to Siegel, Palestinians are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to water:

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race.

The West Bank settlement of Ariel sits on a major aquifer, on Palestinian land!

According to Siegel, Israel is “a model” and has “mastered the management of water resources”:

Israel also treats household sewage as a precious resource, reusing more than 80 percent of it for agriculture. In Iran and many Arab countries, sewage is dumped, which can threaten public health by contaminating wells and aquifers.

Iran? Wait a second. Sewage is being dumped in Palestine too– by Israeli settlers.

Here’s a taste of the reality . . . Harvest of excrement: colonists in Occupied Territories pump sewage on to Palestinian farm land.

July 29, 2011 Ein Yabrud, northeast of Ramallah: State authorities stole private Palestinian land and used it to build a waste facility based on a fictitious permit, for the benefit of the nearby settlement of Ofra.

August 7, 2012, Palestinians say “The bad odor is constant here and nowadays it has become normal to find rodents and insects in this area” because Israeli settlement waste contaminates the environment:
Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)

Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)



staring at the smelly polluted water flowing less than 10 meters from the houses of his village located between Salfit and Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank – “It’s not only about the smell. In the village a lot of people suffer from skin diseases, asthmas, and other illnesses.” The waste water stemming from Ariel settlement has played a major role in the contamination of water and in the pollution of the environment in the Salfit area. Due to the concentration of pollutant elements in this zone, many agricultural fields have been destroyed and many animals and plants have been killed. Moreover, many infectious waterborne diseases, like diarrhea, have broken out especially among children.

The inhabitants of Wadi Fukin and Nahalin, south-west of Bethlehem, face the same problems. Surrounded by the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit, these two villages, known for the quality of the agricultural products, are constantly threatened by the flow of waste water coming from the nearby settlement. “Inside Beitar Illit there is a waste water treatment facility but it can’t handle the amount of waste water it receives and as a consequence it overflows reversing untreated waste water onto the agricultural fields” explains Dib Najajrah, a resident of Wadi Fukin. “Moreover, in the last years the settlers have started attacking our crops by deliberately pumping the waste water coming out of the settlement into the cultivated land of Nahalin.”

Nov 18, 2012 Gaza:

an Israeli air strike hit a water distribution truck in Beit Lahia, destroying it completely and killing the driver Suhail Hamada and his son.

“I have approximately two days stock of drinking water and food,” Mahmoud Sa’adallah, 32, resident of Bait Lahia and a father of five says, “we will have no option but to drink the municipal water which is too salty”. Mahmoud doesn’t know how his children are going to survive in the coming days with the lack of basic necessities if the offensive continues. “My brother and neighbors, for whom the vendor was coming, have already started to drink from the tap”.

The vast majority of the residents of the Gaza strip rely on purchasing desalinated water from private vendors as piped water coming from Gaza’s sole source of fresh water, is too contaminated with chemicals. [1]

From last March. Settler sewage destroys agricultural lands. “Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village”:

Land in village of Qusin used as garbage dump by settlers
ISM 27 Mar by IWPS — On Wednesday March 27 at 15:00 the village of Qusin organized a tour of a nearby quarry that is regularly used as a garbage dump. The residents of Qusin invited the Minister of the Environment, IWPS and the International Solidarity Movement to inspect the amount of Israeli trash that has accumulated in the recent weeks. The quarry had been partially refilled with dirt and gravel covering the majority of the trash, leaving three large piles of plastic, wood and metal exposed. The effect was that of a large land fill in the middle of a mined industrial zone. The organizers of the visit explained that the toxins from the trash are seeping through the soil into the water sources of the nearby villages, endangering the local residents. Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village. Residents of Qusin have started to regularly visit and protest as a community at the dump site.

Also last year, from Sebastia: Sewage flows from the nearby settlement of Shavei Shomron. Palestinians demonstrate against sewage settlers spill onto their land.

Six months before this 2010 video was shot the Israeli Civil Administration tried peddling the claim the flooding of Beit Ummar with raw sewage was the result of “an accidental power malfunction” from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion.

Destroying farmland and vineyards, contaminating Palestinian drinking water, this is no accident. It’s an ongoing environmental nightmare and certainly not limited to a few the villages, it’s routine.

Siegel:

Because of geography and hydrology, the Palestinians’ water future is closely tied to Israel’s. In just the few years of Hamas control of Gaza, the water supply there has been polluted, and though no solution to its coming water crisis is likely without an Israeli role, Hamas has refused to cooperate with Israel.

Allison Deger adds, the water crisis in Gaza is because Israel bombed the water treatment facilities. Israel may not have a role in fixing the crisis, but it sure did cause it. Oh, but then again, Israel could have a hand in fixing the water crisis. B’tselem writes:

Israel has forbidden the entry of equipment and materials needed to rehabilitate the water and wastewater-treatment systems there. The prohibition has remained despite the recent easing of the siege.

Funny anecdote: in 2006, the same year Israel was bombing Gaza’s water infrastructure, Seth Siegel was going on tour in Israel with magician David Blaine. Maybe that’s why he missed this big chunk of information…?

The Jerusalem Fund: The Water Crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

“Israel’s discriminatory and unfair water policy is illegal under international law to the detriment of the Palestinian’s economy and health.”

(Hat tip Patrick Connors)

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