The Beach camp “Al-shate” is located to the west of Gaza City. Small houses are crowded together with an unbearable smell springing from the wastewater running through the alleys. As volunteers in Youth for the Right of Water and Sanitation project (YRWS) we occasionally visit homes there randomly for our case study on water problems. Residents suffer enormously from serious water problems caused by the Israeli occupation which for years has undertaken exploiting and withdrawing all our pure water resources; groundwater, the Jordan River, the Gaza valley and Lake Tiberius. Thus, all aquifers start to run out and the problem of salty water is increasingly appearing in most houses in Gaza.

We visited the home of Haider Saed Abu-Jazya, a 51 year old carpenter and a father of 14 children whose family has a long miserable history with water. “We have been suffering from water shortage and unfair distribution for 10 years. It’s only available for two days a week beginning at midnight only to run out again in the morning. Along with the problem of polluted insufficient supply another problem has emerged, salty water” said Haider who looks older than his age.

The tone of Haider’s voice tells us he is extremely worried about his family’s life. He is likely to pass on the misery he inherited from his refugee parents to his children. “Can you drink a cup of tea melted with three spoons of salt? Absolutely you cannot” he stresses. He describes how salty and polluted water negatively affects his family. For this, he is obliged to buy a 500-liter gallon supply of water which costs 15 NIS 4 US dollars a day. Sometimes he borrows from a neighbor or friend to pay for it, ‏ other times his friends have no money to offer.

Not only is pure water used for drinking but also for ordinary daily use. Haider has a big family, yet he earns a low income to cover the simplest and most important needs of life like water ‏which must be affordable to all people as a matter of human rights.

“A house without water as quiet as a desert”, he concludes.

Once, he ran out of water for two weeks in a row, so his wife couldn’t do the house chores like cooking, washing and laundering. Thus, they had to throw their dirty clothes away, which were not laundered for days and could not be used again.

How can a human being survive in such conditions?! How can not one be infected by diseases of salty water?

“The low quality of water causes allergies and red pimples arising on my children’s skin” his wife whispers.

WHAT TO DO?!

“All dwellers of the neighborhood gathered and headed to the municipality to complain about the water problems we all face, there were promises made but never fulfilled” he said.

Haider speaks on behalf of the Palestinian nation, hoping this voice will be heard all over the planet.

To those who read this article, imagine that you cannot get a drop of pure water while your baby is strongly crying because his milk is his only food.

Palestine suffers from severe lack of water and Gaza’s water in particular is going to run out by 2020. As long as the world commits absolute silence, Gaza will turn into a wasteland. Gaza needs your help, don’t hesitate to help our people.

Late Tuesday morning, around 11:30, a convoy of Israeli Army, civil administration, and border police arrived in the Palestinian village of Amniyr accompanying a flat bed truck with a front end loader and a backhoe. Israeli settlers having a picnic at the settlement outpost next to the Susiya archaeological site looked on as the army destroyed nine large tanks of water and a tent.

Amniyr is a small village of 11 families in the South Hebron Hills, just northeast of the Palestinian village of Susiya and the Israeli settlement of the same name. The village of shepherds and farmers, like most villages in the area, is totally dependent in the summer on tanks of water.

Nor does that water come cheap. Costs of transportation, due to the poor infrastructure in the area – Palestinians are normally not permitted to build roads in Area C of the West Bank and have restricted access to Israeli roads – mean the cost of water is much higher than normal. A cubic meter of water in the nearby town of Yatta costs 6 shekels. In Amniyr it cost 35. The tanks themselves cost 1000 shekels each, and each tank held 2 cubic meters of water, yielding a total of over 10,000 shekels in damage, which for many in the area is equivalent to a half year’s work.

This is the fifth demolition in Amniyr in the last year, according to village residents and Nasser Nawaja, a B’Tselem worker. One month ago the army destroyed 11 houses and two cisterns full of water. The cisterns had also been destroyed 5 months ago and rebuilt with the help of Israeli activists from Ta’ayush. The ruins of houses from previous demolitions are still present; broken stones and twisted metal. Located just south of the archaeological site of old Susiya, the Israeli government claims it is state land.

Ten of the families now sleep in Yatta and come during the day to tend to their olive and almond trees as they have no place to sleep and no water. One couple though has refused to move. Mohammed Hussain Jabour and his wife Zaffra refuse to leave. The morning after the demolition they were making tea on an open fire next to their tent. “I’ve been here with my father and our sheep since I was a little boy,” he said, with visible indignation. “Now I’m an old man. And now Israel tells me I can’t be here. I’m not leaving.”

“What are we supposed to do?” his wife Zaffra asked. “What will we drink? We can’t live without water.”

The demolition comes on the heels of the demolition of 6 tent homes and a toilet in the village of Bir al Eid, just two kilometers to the south, two weeks ago. Both incidents are the latest in a long history of demolitions of Palestinian homes and buildings in the area by the Israeli army, affecting both these villages and the villages of Susiya and nearby Imneizel.

Noah El-Rajabi is a shepherd, with two hundred sheep and goats. He lives in Bani Na’im, 17 kilometres from Hebron. He is married, and has seven children.

Noah El-Rajabi's house

Ten weeks ago the Israeli military demolished his house. His wife and younger children now live in two rented rooms in Hebron. Noah and his oldest son lived in a tent supplied by the Red Cross, so that Noah could continue to work with his flock.

On Monday 11th October, at 8.00 a.m. the Israeli military arrived without warning and destroyed his water cistern, his tent, and a small wooden structure Noah used for cooking and storage.

His oldest son, aged 14, who was with Noah, protested at the soldiers’ action, and was arrested. His son is accused of assaulting two soldiers. Noah reports that soldiers kicked and beat some of the animals and that one pregnant ewe aborted.

ISM activits, along with members from the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) met Noah in Hebron on Tuesday morning 12th October. He did not know where his son was being held, and where he could get water for his animals.

CPTers accompanied Noah to three Israeli police stations. The only information Israeli police gave was that his son was being held in Ofer military prison. They refused to accept a complaint against the Israeli soldiers for their behavior.

ISM and CPTers also visited Noah’s rented accommodation in Hebron. They met his wife and some of his younger children. ‘Please bring my son home’, his wife pleaded.

The animals are being looked after by Noah’s brother, and have been moved to another hillside, where there is water. Agencies in Hebron are trying to reconnect Noah’s water supply, but the cistern will have to be restored, and will run the risk of further demolition orders in the future.

Noah El-Rajabi's destroyed cistern

It took Noah a week to track down his son, and he still has not been able to see him.

This incident illustrates the Israeli government’s continued intimidation and harassment techniques aimed at forcing Palestinians off of their ancestral lands in order to expand settlements, and further control the main West Bank mountain aquifer.

A recent study by the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians. Israelis use 240 cubic meters of water a person each year, against 75 cubic meters for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans. Palestinians have not been able to develop any new production wells in the West Bank since the 1967 war. Noah’s case is a clear example of the inequities surrounding water distribution, and a reflection of the wider apartheid system.

23 August 2010 | ISM Media

Today (23 August 2010) a demonstration was held in the Baqa’a Valley, east of Hebron, against the theft of water from the Palestinian population in the area. About 15 water trucks were parked along Road 60, the road that runs through the valley. The intention was to protest against the fact that the farmers don’t get access to the water reservoirs in Kyriat Arba, the illegal settlement outside Hebron city. The demonstration was also attended by local farmers, standing on the side of the road with the truck drivers. Israeli police and army came to the spot, but did not interfere during the hour-long demonstration.

The water situation in Baqa’a Valley is critical, as the population depends on their farmland to support themselves, and they get a very limited amount of water from the municipality. The settlements in the Hebron district are supported by the Israeli government with the majority of the water resources, originally sourced from Bethlehem, going to settlements. The water is cut off from the Palestinian areas, which receive only a tiny percentage from the Hebron municipality, while most of it is confiscated by the Israeli state and distributed to illegal settlements like Kyriat Arba and Harsina. According to B’Tselem figures from 2008, residents in the Hebron district use on average 56 litres per capita daily – the third lowest amount in the West Bank. In general, Israelis have access to three and a half times more water than Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Baqa’a Valley is the most fertile land in the Hebron district, and the residents are living in constant fear of losing their homes and land, as the area is included in the Israeli state’s plan of dividing the West Bank and expanding and connecting the surrounding settlements. About 35 houses in Baqa’a Valley, in the so-called Area C are now facing eviction orders. In addition the residents frequently face vandalism of crops and water pipes from settlers intent on sabotaging Palestinian residents’ livelihoods. The video below from Tayush shows a recent incident in which settlers attempted to destroy water pipes in the Hebron district.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The water shortage in the Occupied Territories is a major violation of the basic human rights of Palestinians. Israel’s control over and unequal distribution of water resources has been an increasingly harmful policy since 1967 as Palestinian consumption needs have increased with population but not been met due to both neglect of existing infrastructure and failure to construct new water infrastructure, especially in rural areas. There are also numerous restrictions placed on Palestinians right to access water for example by constructing wells. As well as deliberate sabotage by settlers, leakage from pipes due to defective maintenance means that one-third of the amount of the water supplied to the West Bank annually is lost.

Under international law (Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which prohibits an occupying state from discriminating between residents of occupied territory) Israel’s clear discrimination in terms of quantity and regularity of water to supply to settlements as opposed to Palestinian areas is illegal. During the summer Palestinians’ water supplies are often reduced even further in order to meet increased demand from settlements.

Yesterday morning (2 August 2010) a group of Israeli soldiers, reportedly drunk, used two bulldozers to destroy a well that belonged to a family living in Wad Lerus, Hebron.

Several ISM activists went out to talk to members of the Al Jaabel family in Wad Lerus, close to the Kyriat Arba settlement in Hebron, yesterday afternoon.

The family members we talked to were very upset since Hebron already has limited water supply, and they depend on this private well in front of their house as a water source, as do some of their neighbours.  They had also invested a lot of resources, both on building the well and filling it with water.

They explained that a group of approximately 50 soldiers and border police arrived at the family home at 11:00 in the morning on Monday. The soldiers were reported to be drunk, drinking cans of beer while carrying out the destruction work. ISM activists observed empty beer cans scattered around the destroyed well.

The family said that soldiers and border police brought two bulldozers, and that these were used to destroy the walls at the side of the well, causing huge rocks to fall down into it. When the family tried to stop the soldiers, they were met with violence and aggression, including towards the women. The soldiers also destroyed the gate to the house, which was now standing at the side, off the hinge. The attack lasted for about 30 minutes, and severe damage was done to the well during this time. Several water pipes were also cut off.

At the time ISM visited the family, they were about to empty the well since they fear that children might fall into it. There used to be an edge preventing this possibility, which was bulldozed down by the soldiers. The family told us that they had just bought and refilled the well with 80 cubic meters of water, to the cost of 2000 shekels, and now they had to see it all going to waste. The incident was the first time they had experienced a military attack of this nature, and even though they fear it will happen again, they have no other choice but to try and rebuild the well.

For the third time in 12 days, Israeli Border Police carried out demolitions in Al Baqa’a valley, a fertile farming area northeast of Hebron, along route 60. On July 19, the Israeli Border Police, with the assistance of hired laborers using heavy machinery, destroyed a cistern and removed irrigation pipes from 1.5 acres (6 dunams) of vegetable fields.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Israeli Border Police and hired laborers first demolished a rainwater cistern. Border Police and the workers then moved to vegetable fields and removed all of the irrigation pipes. Israeli Border Police used sound grenades to disperse the Palestinian land owners and residents who were gathered around the site of the demolitions. Medical personnel came to give examinations to two women who were suffering adverse affects from the sound grenades, one woman was taken away by ambulance.

Israeli officials continue to dismantle Palestinian water infrastructure in the Beqaa Valley.

See photos at the CPT website.

Israeli border police demolished a rainwater cistern and removed irrigation pipes from several Palestinian fields in Al Beqa’a Valley just east of Hebron on July 14, 2010, the second day of incidents in the area this month.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When international peace activists from Christian Peacemaker Teams arrived in the area at 9:30am, the large bagger that had been used to break up the concrete of the cistern was just leaving the site. The driver of a large tractor lifted scoops full of rocks and dumped them into the demolished cistern. Also, workers cut and disposed of irrigation pipes laid in two fields. The fields each measured 10 dunams (approximately 40 acres). One was a field of grape vines and the other field had tomatoes planted under grape vines. In addition to dismantling the irrigation pipes, the workers also cut the twines that were holding up tomato plants. At least seven families will be affected by this destruction, in total about 50 people.

A Palestinian friend of CPT who lives in Al Beqa’a Valley explained the difficulties residents have in accessing water. A water line has been install by the Palestinian Authority from a nearby village; however, there is no water in the line. There is a large aquiver of water in the Hebron region, and Mekorot, the Israeli water company, has a well along the Israeli bypass road Route 60 in Al Beqa’a Valley which draws from this aquiver (in Area C, which is under full Israeli military control). Palestinian residents in Al Beqa’a Valley had made arrangements to purchase water from Mekorot. However, they never received as much water as they paid for. With the demolition of several rainwater cisterns in the valley in the past year, the Palestinian residents felt that they had no other option but to tap into the Mekorot water line at the well site.

Palestinians alleged that some of the Israelis that were with the border police and DCO on July 14th were from the Mekorot Company. Rather than preventing Palestinians from taping into the well at the source, the Israeli authorities destroyed the irrigation pipes in the fields of several families. Each 200m roll of irrigation drip pipe costs about 370NIS (~100$US), and the connection piping costs about 2.5NIS for each inch. For each dunam of vegetables it takes about 2-3 days to put the irrigation drip piping in place. The cost of the materials and time that goes into growing produce is high. Rather than prevent the ‘theft’ of water (which is ironically from an aquiver under Palestine) earlier in the season, the Israeli authorities instead waited until crops were almost ready for market. Therefore this destruction is not meant to stop the ‘theft’ of water but to cause the highest impact on farmers in the region.

Information on the July 6th incident is available at the Christian Peacemaker Teams website.

Israeli Occupation Forces entered the northern West Bank village of Madama last night, damaging 5 houses and terrifying residents. The military has upped their presence in Madama in recent weeks, with the harassment of female students on their way to school becoming commonplace, and the creation of a new roadblock separating hundreds of farmers from their land.

Approximately 20 soldiers entered the village late last night in military jeeps, the explosion of sound bombs announcing their arrival. The Israeli Occupation Forces remained in the village for approximately 2 hours. The exterior of 5 Madama homes were damaged during the incursion.

The Israeli army is a regular presence in the village. The girls school as become a frequent target for military harassment and intimidation, situated on the northern edge of the village and a mere 100 metres from the Israeli-only road that runs east to Yitzhar settlement. Military jeeps patrol the road, often slowing down or stopping to harass the school’s 338 students, aged from 6 to 18 years, during their breaktimes.

Curfews and flying checkpoints are also regularly established on the edge of, or inside the village, disrupting the girls’ access to school in the morning. Harrasment has increased particularly over the last two weeks, during the already stressful period of exams. Pupils now leave very promptly at the end of school, often met by parents.

Last month the Israeli army erected a giant earth mound across a crucial agricultural road that passes under the settler road and situated next to the school. The road block severely limits hundreds of farmers’ access to their lands, making transport by vehicle all but impossible dealing a severe – and intentional – blow to the village’s chief economy.

Madama’s economy has suffered greatly as a result. In addition to the creeping strangulation of the village’s agricultural livelihood, the Zone C boundary circulating the village prevents both residential building expansion and development work on the village football ground and new work in the stone quarries.

The formation of Yizthar settlement to the south of Madama in 1982 constituted the theft of over 1000 dunams (1 dunam=0.1 hectare) of vital land from Madama farmers, in addition to annexation of land from the neighbouring villages of Burin, Asira al-Qabliya, Urif, Einabus and Huwara. The entirety of Madama’s water wells are situated on the 1000 dunums, forcing the villages’ 1,800 residents to purchase their water supply from outside sources, a 90 litre tank costing an average of 120 NIS.

Madama’s location in a precarious Zone B/Zone C corridor has had a detrimental effect on all aspects of life in the village, as residents can only watch as wanton military harassment surges and creeping annexation of land gradually limits their freedom. The settlement of Qedumim stretches out to the west, Yitzhar to the south, Bracha to the north east and Itamar to the east. The erection of a new military watchtower to the village’s north, and restriction from Palestinians entering the surrounding area, may herald the development of yet another new settlement outpost.

Israeli settlers attacked a flock of sheep on Saturday, November 28. About 30 Israeli soldiers and police came and did nothing except to remove all the Israeli peace activists from the area.

A major issue continues to be whether Palestinians can use the road they built and paid for back in 1984, or whether they have to drive through fields to get to town for supplies. Under legal and moral pressure, the Israeli military has agreed to allow Palestinians to use their road, but soldiers on the ground are continuing to take orders from the settlers who demand that only Jews be allowed to use the roads. I recently waited with Palestinians who were trying to bring tanks full of water to the village. Soldiers had stopped the two tractors. International activists waited with the Palestinians, while Israeli activists put pressure on Israeli military authorities. After four hours, the soldiers left and the water was brought to the village.

On Saturday, December 5, twenty Israeli activists came to work in the village. That is inspiring. The Israeli military declared the area a closed military zone, but the Israeli activists refused to leave. As a token symbol of their authority, the soldiers arrested one activist. I hid in a cave to avoid being removed from the area.

Israeli settlers invaded one of the homes I was protecting in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem on December 2. Two international friends of mine were arrested while the Israeli police protected the thieves. The settlers are now living in the Palestinian house. One by one, the settlers, with the support of the Israeli government, are taking more and more from the Palestinians. Bir el-Eid is an important exception.

I recently took two days off to visit friends in Hebron. The Sultans and Jabers are doing well, but Israeli soldiers recently stole a thousand dollars worth of irrigation pipes from the Jabers. There seems to be a military assault on Palestinian agriculture. The soldiers recently demolished eight major cisterns holding precious water for Palestinian farms in the Beqa’a Valley.

I am extremely happy here in Bir el-Eid. It is the perfect place for me right now. We might be out in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the world, but it feels like we are at the center of the universe. Activists, aid workers, lawyers, and the media are coming here. I was interviewed for TV. I sure do not feel isolated. I am experiencing the universal through the particular.

Peace, Art (Jaber) Gish

27 October 2009

Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.

These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.

“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.

In a new extensive report, Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water.

Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 per cent.

The Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.

While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day, four times as much.

In some rural communities Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.

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.

In contrast, Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools.

Numbering about 450,000, the settlers use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.

In the Gaza Strip, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.

Stringent restrictions imposed in recent years by Israel on the entry into Gaza of material and equipment necessary for the development and repair of infrastructure have caused further deterioration of the water and sanitation situation in Gaza, which has reached crisis point.

To cope with water shortages and lack of network supplies many Palestinians have to purchase water, of often dubious quality, from mobile water tankers at a much higher price.

Others resort to water-saving measures which are detrimental to their and their families’ health and which hinder socio-economic development.

“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.

Israel has appropriated large areas of the water-rich Palestinian land it occupies and barred Palestinians from accessing them.

It has also imposed a complex system of permits which the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT. Applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.

Restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of people and goods in the OPT further compound the difficulties Palestinians face when trying to carry out water and sanitation projects, or even just to distribute small quantities of water.

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.

In rural areas, Palestinian villagers are continuously struggling to find enough water for their basic needs, as the Israeli army often destroys their rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates their water tankers.

In comparison, irrigation sprinklers water the fields in the midday sun in nearby Israeli settlements, where much water is wasted as it evaporates before even reaching the ground.

In some Palestinian villages, because their access to water has been so severely restricted, farmers are unable to cultivate the land, or even to grow small amounts of food for their personal consumption or for animal fodder, and have thus been forced to reduce the size of their herds.

“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 Donatella Rovera.

“Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources.”

The day the bulldozers came…

West Bank farmer Mahmoud al-’Alam won’t forget the day Israeli army bulldozers cut off his water supply… and destroyed his livelihood.

The village of Beit Ula, where Mahmoud lives, is not connected to the Palestinian water network. Instead the community, located north-west of Hebron, relies on rainwater, which it collects and stores in pots dug in the ground, known as cisterns.

The nine new cisterns built in 2006 as part of a European Union-funded project to improve food security became the pride of the village. The cisterns were vital to the survival of the nine families that used them… until the bulldozers arrived.

“[The Israeli army] destroyed everything; they went up and down several times
with the bulldozer and uprooted everything,” recalls Mahmoud al-’Alam.

In a few hours, years of hard work had been undone. The cisterns had been built with the help of two local nongovernmental organizations, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees and the Palestinian Hydrology Group.

The cisterns provided water for 3,200 newly planted trees including olive, almond, lemon and fig trees. The farmers had also contributed a significant portion of the overall cost of the project.

“We invested a lot of money and worked very hard,” said Mahmoud al-’Alam. “This is good land and it was a very good project. We put a lot of thought into how to shape the terraces and build the cisterns in the best way, to make the best use of the land, and we planted trees which need little water… the saplings were growing well…”

The story of Beit Ula is one of many cases where Israeli forces have targeted Palestinian communities in the region.

On 4 June 2009, the Israeli army destroyed the homes and livestock pens of 18
Palestinian families in Ras al-Ahmar, a hamlet in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank.

More than 130 people were affected, many of them children. Crucially, the soldiers
confiscated the water tank, tractor and trailer used by the villagers to bring in water. They were left without shelter or a water supply at the hottest time of the year.

On 28 July 2007, Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint confiscated the tractor and water tanker of Ahmad Abdallah Bani Odeh, a villager from the hamlet of Humsa.

An Israeli army official told Amnesty International that the vital items were being confiscated in an attempt to force the villagers from the area, which the army had declared a “closed military area”.

In another village, a rainwater harvesting cistern belonging to Palestinian villagers was destroyed by the Israeli army under the pretext that it was built without a permit. Permits for water projects have to be obtained from the Israeli authorities but are rarely granted to Palestinians.

In recent years the homes of Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley have been repeatedly destroyed and their water tankers confiscated.

Each time, the homes – tents and simple shacks made of metal and plastic sheets – are rebuilt. Because of the villagers’ determination to remain on their land despite extremely harsh living conditions, the Israeli army has increasingly restricted their access to water as a way of forcing them to abandon the area.

In’am Bisharat, a mother of seven from the village of Hadidiya, told Amnesty International: “We live in the harshest conditions, without water, electricity or any services.

“The lack of water is the biggest problem. The men spend most of the day…[going] to get water and they can’t always bring it. But we have no choice. We need a little bit of water to survive and to keep the sheep alive. Without water there is no life.

“The [Israeli] army has cut us off from everywhere…We don’t choose to live like this; we would also like to have beautiful homes and gardens and farms, but these privileges are only for the Israeli settlers… we are not even allowed basic services.”

The lack of water has already forced many Palestinians to leave the Jordan Valley and the survival of the communities is increasingly threatened. In Beit Ula, Mahmoud al-’Alam’s livelihood is similarly at risk.

“It is very painful for me every time to come here and see the destruction; everything we worked for is gone. Why would anyone want to do this? What good can come from [it]?” he asks.