7/29, Webinar. Denying Life: The Annexation of Palestinian Water

Institute for Palestinian Studies presents…Denying Life: The Annexation of Palestinian Water

Access to water is crucial for agriculture and sanitation. Without it, a community can quickly be destroyed. Water is life.

As the occupying force, Israel controls water resources, denying them to Palestinians. The annexation of water threatens Palestinian health, culture and survival.

The Institute for Palestine Studies and the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) invite you to attend a webinar on this subject. Our panel of speakers will discuss the implications of what the loss of water means for Palestine.

The event will be live-streamed to IPS' Facebook page on July 29th at 11:00 am EST (U.S. and Canada)

Go here for more.

The panel:

Dr. Stephen P. Gasteyer is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on community development, environmental justice, and the political ecology of landscape change. Recent research has addressed community approaches to food, water and sanitation access and water quality protection; settler colonialism, land grabs, technology, and modes of resistance; and environmental equity, service delivery, and the response to COVID-19.

-Dr. Abdelrahman Al Tamimi is an assistant professor Strategic Planning and Future Studies at the Arab American University and a part-time lecturer at the Institute of Sustainable Development at Al Quds University. He has extensive experience in the field of water resource management, water governance, water policy, institutional building and reform, and water resource planning. He is the author of the book “Water Privatization and Regional Political Agenda”, and co-author of the report “Mediterranean challenges 2030.”

Dr. Muna Dajani (moderator) holds a PhD in Geography and Environment from the London School of Economics. Her research examines water struggles in agricultural communities and the linkages with politics of belonging and recognition. She has contributed to numerous studies on the hydropolitics of the Jordan and Yarmouk River Basins. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Lancaster Environment Centre.

Water as a Weapon against Palestinians

Even before Covid-19 and its ongoing and devastating toll, the everyday health conditions in the Gaza Strip were [undermined] by Israel.

Israel’s assaults and bombardments of the Gaza Strip’s wells and water infrastructure have forced 97% of its two million residents (991,400 are children) to live without clean drinking water. More than 98% of the water is unfit for drinking. (The high levels of contamination in the water sources also affect products and food produced with that water.)

The deterioration of the sanitation system, the prevalence of contaminated water and sewage, and the lack of clean drinking water has led to  

• a 41.5% rate of life-threatening diarrhea among young children

• undernutrition, which contributes to diseases and impedes growth (causing 7.1% of children to be stunted in height)

• anemia in 59.7% of schoolchildren

• spikes in salmonella and typhoid fever caused by fecal contamination (every day, 43 Olympic swimming pools worth of raw and poorly treated sewage spill into the Mediterranean off the coast of Gaza) 

• sharp rises in gastroenteritis, kidney disease, anemia, pediatric cancer, marasmus (a disease of severe malnutrition), and "blue baby” syndrome

• dehydration and fever

Families in the Gaza Strip are forced to buy expensive drinking water, with little or no quality control, from private vendors. 53% of the population lives below the poverty line. Approximately 34% (656,000 people) lives on less than $3.60 per day. The shortage of potable water and inability to buy bottled water causes repeated urinary tract infections and dehydration.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza bans entry of more than 70% of the materials necessary for water and wastewater projects, calling them “dual-use items,” considered to have military and civilian applications. ("Dual-use items" include cement, wood, solar panels, construction materials, water pumps, spare parts, generators, clothing, blankets, mattresses, mobile pumps to dewater flooded areas, water-testing and disinfection material, essential electromechanical equipment.)

The devastating water crisis has forced hospitals to reduce the cleaning and sterilizing of medical facilities. 

 For sources, see various facts on Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine fact sheet.

The Jewish National Fund at Work

“The Israel Land Authority will agree to uproot trees that were systematically planted in order to deter Bedouin residents from areas in the Negev desert, if it is decided to allocate the lands to formalize unrecognized Bedouin settlements.

…The planting, which the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael) is in charge of, is planned across 40,000 dunams (10,000 acres) and focuses on areas around the Bedouin communities of Segev Shalom and Abu Talul.

Israel Says May Uproot Trees Planted to Deny Negev Lands to Bedouin – Haaretz

An unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev, December 2019.Credit: Eyal Toueg

A Model Letter from the Alliance to Send to Your Reps

One of our supporters asked for a letter like this. Please use it as you see fit: cut-and-paste or draw information from it.

July 2020

Dear [Member of Congress],

I write as a constituent who is greatly concerned about the looming water crisis facing people here in the United States and around the globe. The huge US racial gap in access to water documented in recent reports [1] makes it imperative for Congress to pass HR 1417, the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability Act.

But where is the money to come from to address the needs of 2 million people who do not have access to running water and indoor plumbing in the richest country in the world?

One very appropriate way we can begin to tackle the shocking inequities in access to clean water is to re-direct for this purpose much of the $3.8 billion of our tax dollars that the US gives annually to Israel, a country that uses water as a weapon of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.

Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, Israel has seized some 80% of the water in West Bank aquifers for its own exclusive use and that of its illegal West Bank settlements. The more than 650,000 Israelis living in those settlements are allotted 6 times more water than 3 million West Bank Palestinians.

While Israeli settlers freely irrigate their land and fill swimming pools with stolen water, the Israeli army and settlers routinely destroy Palestinian wells and water infrastructure, forcing farmers off their land. Israel regularly cuts off the water supply to Palestinian towns and villages, leaving families with only two options: spending up to half of their monthly expenditure on trucked water, or leaving altogether.

In the Gaza Strip, the situation is even more dire, as 97% of the water is unfit to drink and the sole aquifer is on the verge of collapse. A 14-year-long Israeli blockade prevents the import of materials needed to repair the water and sanitation infrastructure, which has been repeatedly damaged by Israel’s military attacks.

For much too long the US has annually bestowed on Israel billions of our tax dollars, despite provisions of the US Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act that prohibit assistance to any country that engages in the pattern of human rights violations documented over the years by UN bodies, civil society organizations, and the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

Now, as Prime Minister Netanyahu is poised to eviscerate international law by annexing Palestinian land outright and making Israel a de jure Apartheid state, we ask you to go beyond expressing “grave concern” at Israel’s proposed actions, and to be prepared to sanction its conduct.

It is high time to end US complicity in Israel’s war crimes by ending the funding that enables its behavior.

At this critical time our tax dollars would be much better used to benefit your constituents at home, as we struggle to deal with water inequities and the crippling impact of the Corona virus pandemic.

Sincerely,

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/23/full-report-read-in-depth-water-poverty-investigation
 
http://uswateralliance.org/sites/uswateralliance.org/files/Closing%20the%20Water%20Access%20Gap%20in%20the%20United%20States_DIGITAL.pdf

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NOTE: Two more all-encompassing sources to consider:  reliefweb, UN humanitarian response

You can get in touch with us through our website. If you need us to send this to you as an attachment, let us know. If you do send a letter, we would love to see a copy!