Water Fact & Video: December 26

Please watch this 3-minute film by Al Haq called Water Apartheid and Corporate Complicity. 

Palestinians in the West Bank rely on groundwater resources because there are no surface waters and Israel has denied access to their only river, the Jordan River.

But Israel prevents Palestinians in the West Bank from accessing their groundwater—through the demolitions of wells, cisterns, pipes, and other structures via its military forces, and by other illegal means, such as denying building permits. From January 1998 to April 2020, Israel issued nearly 20,000 demolition orders for Palestinian-owned structures in Area C of the West Bank, including those related to water located on private Palestinian land.

Palestinians in the West Bank connected to the water grid receive only 73 liters, and those not connected get only 20 liters—WHO’s minimum amount of water deemed necessary for basic needs is 100 liters/person/day,

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face a scarcity of useable and drinkable water. More than 97% of the water in the Gaza Strip is undrinkable. Only 4% of households in the Gaza Strip have access to water that is free of contamination.These appalling sanitary conditions are exacerbated during the COVID 19 pandemic. But even before then, waterborne disease was a major cause of poverty and death.

Israel restricts the importation of materials to (re-)build the Gaza Strip’s water infrastructure, which it bombed and destroyed.  

See this excellent new report from Al-Haq called Corporate Liability: The Right to Water and the War Crime of Pillage. 

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Our Audacious Plan for World Water Day

 WORLD WATER DAY 2023!
 
Friends and allies in solidarity with Palestine,
 
Please join us in making a Congressional impact on World Water Day, March 22, 2023. As we hear daily, water scarcity and the lack of access to clean water is a global problem, including in the US. 
 
Control of Palestinian water has always been a goal of the Zionist project. Israel uses water as a weapon. Water has been key to Israel’s theft of Palestinian land for decades. The amount of water now available to Palestinians falls far below the minimum of 100 liters daily set by the World Health Organization for “short-term survival.”
 
Palestinians in the West Bank connected to the water grid get only 73 liters, those not connected get only 20. In the Gaza Strip, 97% of the water is undrinkable. 
                                                                                                    
We invite you and your members to join us in contacting our Congressional delegations to urge them to demand accountability. We want the human rights of Palestinians to be central to US policy relations with Israel. We want the US to invoke the Leahy Law of 1997, which limits how US funds to foreign militaries can be used when it is determined that they are involved in the gross violation of human rights through their military actions. The Israeli military’s deliberate destruction of Palestine’s water infrastructure, as a key part of Israel's systematic theft and deprivation of water in its ongoing dispossession of land, constitutes a gross violation of human rights. 
 
US Taxpayers give $3.8 billion annually in uncritical support of Israel. We want to hold Israel accountable AND we want to re-direct those funds for use in our communities. 
 
Check out this interactive map from USCPR showing the amount spent by each state on weapons for Israeland samples of how it can be redistributed in your state to fund access to clean water, health care, education, housing, and other community needs. 
 
Please let us know if this is something your members might do. We will send more detailed action steps if you are interested in participating.
 
Let’s mark World Water Day 2023 together by inundating Congress with our calls and emails!  
 
We look forward to hearing from you.                                         
 
The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine

Water Fact: December 12, 2022

Water Fact: December 12, 2022

 

The Gaza Strip: drowning in injustice

You might think that water falling from the sky would bring welcome relief in the Gaza Strip where 98% of the water is not potable and up to 120,000 cubic meters of untreated sewage still flow into the sea despite the construction of a new German-built wastewater plant for Central Gaza. 

 

But now when it rains the horrors associated with Israel’s collective punishment pour forth.  The military offenses of 2008-9, 2012, 2014, 2021 and August 2022 have damaged and destroyed wells, reservoirs, pumping stations and in May 2021 alone, some 250,000 meters of sewage and water pipes.   

 

After each of these assaults, Israel’s blockade has delayed rebuilding by months and even years.  The supposedly temporary ‘Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism’ (GRM) set up by the Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the UN in 2014 to supervise the entry of construction materials has done little to speed up repairs, as ‘dual-use’ items including cement, pipes and electromechanical equipment that Israel says threaten its security can be banned altogether.  In 2017 there were 8,500 items on the ‘dual-use’ list. 

 

Today, the collapsing infrastructure cannot handle even an hour of rain, causing streets and houses to flood. When the cold winter rains began in early November 2022, Gaza City “turned into an ocean” as depicted in this short video.   Children wade to school through waist-high water as water pipes stop working, cars get submerged and sink holes are created in the streets.  And as this December 3, 2022 article describes, the floods are getting worse each year, exacerbated by climate change. 

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross has denounced Israel’s 15-year-long blockade as a form of collective punishment that violates international law.  The photographs in its report ‘Floods and cold hit the most vulnerable in the Gaza Strip’ provide a heart-wrenching illustration of this injustice.

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