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AL-DHAHRIYEH (West Bank): The Khabirat family postpone having a bath as they await the next water tanker to replenish their well in parched Palestinian territory under Israeli blockade.
The tanker driver has to sneak a hose through a tunnel under a highway reserved for Israeli traffic to access his well on the other side, then take long detours on atrocious back roads to reach homes like the Khabirats’.
Palestinians, especially in the arid southern West Bank, ration and improvise to offset water shortages aggravated by Israel’s closure of their area, imposed after suicide bombings.
Arduous, roundabout routes inflate delivery prices for people already impoverished by the closure that, along with worsening drought, has highlighted a long unequal contest to control water that is central to Middle Eastern conflict.
Israel takes 80 per cent of the West Bank’s mountain aquifer, one of two major renewable water sources in the territory it seized in a 1967 war.
The other source, the Jordan River dividing the West Bank from Jordan, is dominated by Israel for nearby Jewish farms.
Water will be a thorny “final status” issue in a US-backed peace “road map” aiming at an independent Palestinian state.
“Occupation has played a big role in inequality. Israel should be concerned, for if Palestinians lack sufficient water to improve their lives, they will lack the will to uphold peace agreements,” said Yehezkel Lein, water expert at B’tselem, an Israeli group monitoring human rights in occupied territories.
WINTER RAINWATER: Families in the barren village of al-Dhahriyeh said winter rainwater they collect soon ran out in the long blazing summer.
“We used to bathe and wash clothes every day, now it’s every two to three days. We’d love to have water for a garden, trees, even a pool like the Jews do (in nearby settlements),” said Siham Khabirat, a 40-year-old mother of six.
“Most of us must buy water to top up wells but tanker prices are up 100 per cent under closure. It’s a double blow when our own income has plunged due to lack of work,” husband Yusuf said.
They were sitting in their living room under a painting of a glistening Alpine lake. “It cheers us up a bit,” said Siham.
Mahmoud Ahmad Tayyem, 61, a father of 10, keeps his melon and mint alive by watering them in drips from a tiny hole in a plastic jug he holds patiently at an angle over them.
“Once I could just hose the plants, but deliveries are too few and far between to risk that now,” he said.
Israeli forces erected dirt-and-rock barricades at junctions between village roads and highways earlier in the 33-month-old uprising to prevent all but localized movement by Palestinians.
Palestinians also complain of disappearing water pressure and increasingly brackish water, blaming Israeli “overpumping”.
Israel says more than 4,000 wells drilled by Palestinians in defiance of restrictions imposed to shore up the water table are to blame. Palestinians say they suffer far more from such curbs than Israelis, forcing them resort to illegal wells.
ISRAEL SAYS IT CONSERVES WATER: Jacob Kaidar, head of water negotiating issues at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said Israelis consumed less water per head than any Middle East state except Jordan and denied they were arbitrarily curbing Palestinian access to precious sources.
“Israel is known the world over for its know-how in water conservation, especially in agriculture,” he said.
“We have worked hard to keep Palestinian communities supplied with water by repairing pipes damaged in fighting, and (protecting) wells and tanker traffic.”
An army spokesman said Palestinians could deliver water on through-roads with prior security clearance. Tanker drivers said they had been held up at checkpoints even with such passes.—Reuters
