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.
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.
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.
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.
I have now been in the village of Bir el-Eid for three weeks. This has been a great time of connecting with the people here, helping with chores with the sheep, going out in the hills with the sheep, and helping rebuild the village.
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.
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.
