Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
waterjusticeinpalestine.org
Facts #1 to #209
Fact #1 (8/2/16)
Throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians.
95% of Gaza’s 2 million residents are without clean drinking water due to Israel’s destruction of Palestinian wells and water infrastructure.
In the West Bank, the 650,000 people living in Israel’s illegal settlements are allotted six times more water than the 2.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis
https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/how-israeli-settlements-stifle-palestines-economy
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/#sthash.BWiYB9dI.dpuf
Fact #2 (8/9/16)
53% of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem are banned under Israeli law from being connected to the city's water network.
www.ewash.org/wash-in-opt/west-bank
Fact #3 (8/16/16)
Due to Israel’s destruction of Palestinian wells and water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, 95–97% of the water in Gaza is now unfit for drinking, cooking, or agricultural use.
www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis
Fact #4 (8/23/16)
Palestinians in the West Bank are allocated only 20% of water from the Mountain Aquifer, which is their sole source of water. The 80% allocated to Israelis is only one of several water resources available to them.
Amnesty International, “Troubled waters – Palestinians denied fair access to water / Israel-occupied Palestinian Territories,” pdf, 2009
Fact #5 (8/30/16)
In 2011, Israel allotted the average settlement household in the Jordan Valley 7.5 times more water than the average Palestinian household in the same region (450 versus 60 liters per day).
Human Rights Watch, “Occupation, Inc. How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” pdf, 2016
Fact #6 (9/6/16)
Nearly 90% of aquifers in the West Bank are diverted to Israelis, leaving Palestinians with access to less than 10% of their own water, in violation of international law.
www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/water.html
Fact #7 (9/13/16)
Mekorot (Israel’s state-owned water company) routinely cuts the supply of water to Palestine—by as much as 50%—during summer months to meet the consumption in Israel and its settlements.
Amnesty International, “Troubled waters–Palestinians denied fair access to water/Israel-occupied Palestinian Territories,” pdf, 2009
Fact #8 (9/20/16)
From 2011 to 2013 the Israeli army destroyed 205 Palestinian water and sanitation structures: 92 cisterns, 46 toilets/sanitary units, 33 water tanks, 22 wells, 8 pipelines, 4 springs.
EWASH demolition figures provided by UN OCHA, 2013: PASSIA, “Area C: The key to the two-state solution,” 2012
Fact #9 (9/27/16)
Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza resulted in $34m in damages to Gaza’s water infrastructure. (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2015) http://www.nrc.no/arch/img.aspx?file_id=9206776
Fact #10 (10/4/16)
Some remote Palestinian communities consume just 10–20 liters per person/day, and are dependent on expensive, poor quality tanker water, while illegal Israeli settlements scattered throughout the West Bank consume as much as 700 litres per person/day for domestic use.
www.ewash.org/wash-in-opt/west-bank
Fact #11 (10/11/16)
Ninety-five percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents—whose water access is controlled by Israel—are without clean drinking water.
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/#sthash.BWiYB9dI.dpuf
Fact #12 (10/18/16)
50,000 Palestinians in 151 communities live on less than the minimum amount of water deemed necessary by the World Health Organization (WHO) for “short-term survival.” Mekorot routinely cuts the supply to Palestinians—sometimes by as much as 50%—during summer months to meet consumption needs in Israel and the settlements.
B'tselem, Internet: 10/11/2016
Fact #13 (10/25/16) [photo]
Fact #14 (11/1/16)
Around 200,000 people in West Bank rural areas have no connection to the water network and rely on tankered water to meet their basic needs. They pay up to 400% more for every litre than those connected to the water network.
(EWASH and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, cited in European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016)
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
Fact #15 (11/8/16)
Since 1995, Israel has rejected 26 out of 30 Palestinian proposals for new, desperately needed, waste water treatment facilities. Of the 4 projects approved by Israel since 1995, only one has been built.
World Health Organization, “Report of a field assessment of health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, 22 March to 1 April 2015,” pdf
Fact #16 (11/15/16)
Due to the Occupation and unrepaired war damage, 120,000 people across Gaza remain disconnected from the water network.
UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2015 Humanitarian Bulletin
Fact #17 (11/22/16)
Israel controls over 90% of water resources in Palestine.
www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/palestine-water-resources-israel-agreement-resolution-291.html
Fact #18 (11/29/16)
Palestinians receive on average 18.5 gallons of water per person per day, falling short of the World Health Organization’s minimum standard of 26.5 gallons per person per day.
(U.S. State Dept. Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Israel and OPT, 2014)
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2014/nea/236604.htm
Fact #19 (12/6/16)
In Gaza, chloride and nitrates in water exceed 5–10 times the acceptable level.
World Health Organization, “Report of a field assessment of health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, 22 March to 1 April 2015”
Fact #20 (12/13/16)
Nearly 600,000 Israeli settlers use 6 times more water than the entire population of the West Bank—some 2.86 million people.
https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/how-israeli-settlements-stifle-palestines-economy
Fact #21 (12/20/16)
Palestinian farmers’ limited access to water and the higher price they pay for water have crippled their farms and livelihoods. Many Palestinians must then seek employment in settlements, providing a steady source of cheap labor for settlement companies.
Human Rights Watch, “Occupation, Inc. How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” 2016
Fact #22 (12/27/16) photo
Fact #23 (1/3/17)
The Israeli army routinely carries out orders to demolish communal water cisterns and water wells (many of which are hundreds of years old) on privately owned Palestinian farmland. In 2011 alone, the army destroyed 89 WASH structures in the West Bank, including 21 wells, 34 cisterns, and many small fixed water tanks that have been given to rural households. Demolition includes razing vegetable gardens, animal barns, and storage sheds.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/05/israels-water-genocide/
Fact #24 (1/10/17)
Cutting off Palestinian communities and farmers (who depend on water for their livelihoods) from their water resources usually precedes Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land for new Israeli projects and settlements. Israeli settlers have used threats, intimidation, and fences to ensure control of water points close to the settlements.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/05/israels-water-genocide/
Fact #25 (1/17/17)
Due to Israeli-imposed artificial water shortages and lack of wastewater treatment facilities and sewage networks, the majority of Palestinians have to privately construct water wells, cesspits, and septic tanks. In the rural areas Palestinians must depend on rainwater-gathering pools, cisterns, and water tanks, which increases the risks to public health.
It is estimated that 44% of Palestinian children in rural areas suffer from diarrhea—the biggest killer of children under 5 years old in the world—because of poor water quality and hygiene.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/05/israels-water-genocide/
Fact #26 (1/24/17)
The Israeli Apartheid wall, built to include on the Israeli side the fertile Palestinian agricultural land with large groundwater aquifers, has resulted in the loss of Palestinians’ access to more than 49 water wells and reservoirs used for drinking and agriculture.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/05/israels-water-genocide/
Fact #27 (1/31/17)
The World Health Organization’s minimum of water consumption per person is 100 litres/day.
But for Palestinians in the West Bank, water consumption per person (for all use) is 73 litres/day for those connected to a water grid and is as low as 20¬ litres/day for those not connected to a water grid.
Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene group, 2015 ewash.org
www.btselem.org/jerusalem/20140527_shufat_water_crisis
Fact #28 (2/7/17)
96% of the water from the aquifer in Gaza is is contaminated with nitrates and chloride. The total number of wells in Gaza that meet WHO safety criteria for both nitrates and chloride is just 14—or 6.5% of the wells.
www.inthesetimes.com/article/14148/gaza_the_worlds_largest_open_air_prison and www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip (2014)
Fact #29 (2/14/17)
40% of people in Gaza receive water for only 5 to 8 hours every three days.
Israel has obstructed efforts by aid organizations to address the water issue in Palestine. Israel’s blockade has restricted 70% of the materials needed for water and wastewater projects (example: cement, wood, solar panels), calling them “dual-use items,” considered to have military and civilian applications.
www.ewash.org/wash-in-opt/west-bank
www.inthesetimes.com/article/14148/gaza_the_worlds_largest_open_air_prison and www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip (2014)
Fact #30 (2/21/17)
Due to the low quantities of water available to Palestinian farmers, only 6.8% of the cultivated land in the West Bank is irrigated.
Israel confiscates 82% of Palestinian groundwater in the West Bank for use inside Israel’s borders and in its settlements.
(EWASH and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, cited in European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015)
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #31 (2/28/17)
In February 2017, Israeli forces demolished a water pipeline in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank—after destroying the same pipeline earlier in the month. The 47 Palestinian families who depended on the pipeline lost their water source. The pipeline had been funded by UNICEF.
Earlier in the month, Israel seized 400-meter-long water hoses used by local farmers for irrigation.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775564
Fact #32 (3/7/17)
Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants must rely on polluted coastal aquifers as their main source of freshwater—95% of this water is not safe to drink.
The few who can pay for clean water will spend up to a third of their income.
Gaza has the world's highest unemployment rate. Israel's 2014 war on Gaza, and its land, air, and sea blockade has pushed unemployment to a record high of 43%.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/gaza-becoming-uninhabitable-as-society-can-no-longer-support-itself-report
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-has-highest-unemployment-rate-world-bank-report-n364711
Fact #33 (3/14/17)
Israel controls approximately 80% of water reserves in the West Bank.
Israel’s control of water, plus Israeli settlements and the apartheid wall, have deprived the Palestinian economy of 63% of the agricultural resources of the West Bank, including the most fertile and best grazing land.
Only 35% of irrigable Palestinian land is actually irrigated, costing the Palestinian economy 110,000 jobs per year.
European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #34 (3/21/17)
Some Israeli settlements consume as much as 400 litres/day/person of water, and have enough water to run farms and orchards, swimming pools, and spas.
Palestinians in the West Bank consume 70 litres/day—and even less for those not connected to a water grid.
The World Health Organization minimum of water consumption per person is 100 litres/day.
United Nations Human Rights Council [http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/26/water-apartheid-in-palestine/]; EWASH.org, Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene group, 2015 ewash.org
Fact #35 (3/28/17)
In the West Bank, 180 Palestinian communities are not connected to the water network and 122 communities have a connection with no or irregular supply as a result of Israeli restrictions.
Israel does not allow Palestinians to build small dams to collect and store rainwater and release it throughout the year. If these structures were permitted, significant water resources could be used for irrigation—and for drinking.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-water-tool-dominate-palestinians-160619062531348.html; http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #36 (4/4/17)
After Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, more than 50% of the water infrastructure could not be used and over a million residents were left without access to water.
Today, 95% of Gaza’s two million residents—whose water access is controlled by Israel—are without clean drinking water and 23% of the population in Gaza is without sanitation services.
(UN, 2015), unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1068
(EWASH and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2016)
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/
Fact #37 (4/11/17)
Israel controls about 80% of water reserves in the West Bank.
The 9,500 Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley alone use one-third the total amount of water used by the West Bank’s 2.6 million Palestinians.
(EWASH and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, cited in European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016)
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
Fact #38 (4/18/17) [photo]
Fact #39 (4/25/17)
Supply and treatment of water depend on electicity. In Gaza, the electric supply at full capacity meets only 70% of demand, and Palestinians are subjected to daily power outages of 12–16 hours.
Cuts in Gaza’s electricity and Israel's blockade of construction materials necessary for the sanitation network have caused increased salination and sewage pollution of the water.
As a result, 96% of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption.
(EWASH) Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene group, 2015, ewash.org
Fact #40 (5/2/17)
Last month (April 2017), Israeli bulldozers—escorted by Israeli military jeeps and officials from Israel’s Civil Administration—destroyed all the water pipelines providing the village of Bardala, in the West Bank, with water.
The 3,500 residents were left without access to any water.
Amnesty International estimates that up to 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank do not have access to running water.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=776708NABLUS
Fact #41 (5/9/17)
The World Health Organization estimates that contaminated water is responsible for 26% of all disease in Gaza and 50% of children suffer from water-related parasitic infections.
Diarrhea, acute bloody diarrhea, and viral hepatitis (all waterborne) have been the leading causes of death from infectious disease in Gaza, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency.
During its 2014 war on Gaza, Israel destroyed more than 50% of Gaza’s water infrastructure.
95% of the Gaza Strip’s two million residents rely on polluted water.
https://water.fanack.com/specials/gaza-water-crisis
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/18/sewage-crisis-threatens-gazas-access-to-water.html
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015)
unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1068
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/
Fact #42 (5/16/17)
Israel regularly cuts off water supply to many Palestinian towns and villages. Palestinians are then forced to buy trucked water at five times the price of network water.
Trucked water can cost 50% of a Palestinian family’s monthly expenditure.
Illegal Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley spend a mere 0.9% of their expenditure on water.
http://english.pnn.ps/2017/03/23/israeli-apartheid-and-the-case-of-water-question-and-answer/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-water-tool-dominate-palestinians-160619062531348.html
Fact #43 (5/23/17)
Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza damaged an estimated 778 underground wells. Only 162 have been fixed because Israel denies entry for the materials needed for the repairs.
As a result, approximately 100 million cubic meters of water are lost annually.
Winter downpours could have replenished reservoirs had they been properly functioning, but instead, 60% of rainwater seeps into the sea.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/water-pollution-reaches-catastrophic-levels-gaza/16616 10 May 2016
Fact #44 (5/30/17)
Only 16 of the 180 Palestinian villages in Area C (in the West Bank) are connected to a water supply.
Even then, they are not connected to a water source, but are dependent on Israel’s water network, Mekorot.
Mekorot assigns fixed water limits to Palestinians, but Israelis in the settlements receive water based on demand and consumption.
During the summer months, Mekorot meets the increased demand for water in the settlements by reducing supply to Palestinian communities. Palestinians wait s for water, often receiving it only in the middle of the night.
http://www.lifegate.com/people/news/israeli-palestinian-water-conflict, April 2017
http://www.btselem.org/water/201609_israel_cut_back_supply
Fact #45 (6/6/17)
When Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967, the Israeli army issued a series of military orders seizing control of water and land resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdf/mde150272009en.pdf
Fact #46 (6/13/17)
Agriculture and fishing are critical to the Palestinian economy.
In the Gaza Strip, in addition to controlling water, Israel has restricted Palestinians’ access to over 50% of the agricultural land and 85% of the maritime space.
Israel’s Deadly Catch, Al-Haq report, http://www.alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/israel-s-deadly-catch
Fact #47 (6/20/17)
Israel limits fishing off the Gaza coast to 3 to 6 miles, instead of the 20 miles stipulated in the Oslo Accords. Those who sail beyond this limit risk arrest, being shot, and having their boats seized.
The limited fishing areas are contaminated with sewage because Israel destroyed sewage treatment facilities and refuses to allow their repair.
The number of Palestinians employed in the fishing industry has declined by 66% since 2000.
The lack of affordable protein has led to a decline in nutrition and led to serious health problems, especially for children.
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development).
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #48 (6/27/17)
Every day, 100,000 cubic meters of raw sewage are discharged into the sea around Gaza.
About half of Gaza’s beaches are unfit for swimming. Many are closed to the public. Both sand and water are contaminated.
Electricity, necessary to treat raw sewage, is currently available fewer than 3 hours/day.
Israel bombed Gaza’s sole electric power plant in 2006 and further destroyed and damaged Gaza’s infrastructure during successive bombings. In addition, Israel’s imposed economic blockade restricts the repair of this necessary infrastructure.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/life-septic-tank/20826
Fact #49 (7/4/17)
Since Israel’s occupation of Palestine began, in 1967, not a single Palestinian village or individual has received permission to drill a well for irrigation. Over this period, Israeli settlements have drilled 27 new wells.
In addition, Israeli settlements and military bases remove large quantities of West Bank water from Palestinian wells and springs through pipes and tank trucks.
Today, July 4th, while the U.S. is celebrating its independence, Palestinians have been living under occupation for 50 years.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer116/water-israels-occupation-strategy
Fact #50 (7/11/17)
Between 1990 and 2015, Israel expanded the area of its illegal settlements in the West Bank (including occupied East Jerusalem) by 185%—from 30 to 76 square miles. The population of Israeli settlers tripled—from 240,000 in 1990 to more than 763,000 in 2016.
The average water supply for Palestinians in the West Bank is a meager 76 liters/day/person (24 liters/day/person fewer than the World Health Organization’s minimum). Israeli settlers’ use has soared to an average of 369 liters/day/person.
http://english.pnn.ps/2017/05/22/arij-report-50-years-of-occupation/
Fact #51 (7/18/17)
In June (2017), Israel demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev region of southern Israel for the 114th time since 2010, and for the sixth time this year.
Israel considers Al-Araqib an “unrecognized” village and therefore refuses to connect it to the water grid. Approximately 80,000 Negev Bedouin live in 35 “unrecognized” villages.
Al-Araqib residents have been ordered to pay more than two million shekels (approximately $541,000) for the cumulative cost of Israel’s demolitions carried out against them since 2010.
Israeli Jewish communities in the Negev continuously expand, with five new housing plans approved last year.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777646
Fact #52 (7/25/19)
In one month (January 2017), Israeli bulldozers
—demolished an 11-kilometer water line serving 36 Palestinian families in two Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley.
—damaged a plastic water provider serving 36 families in two communities. (This water system was supported by donors.)
—demolished ten water wells used by Palestinian farmers, under the pretext of unlicensed construction.
http://english.pnn.ps/2017/01/10/iof-damage-water-line-which-provides-to-36-families-in-jordan-valley/
http://english.pnn.ps/2017/01/04/iof-demolish-10-water-wells-near-bethlehem/
Fact #53 (8/1/17)
Nearly 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank do not have access to running water.
During the summer months, up to 50% of Palestinian water supplies were diverted by Mekorot (Israel’s water network) to meet the consumption needs of Israel's illegal settlements.
Israelis, including settlers, have access to 300 liters of water per day, while the West Bank average is 70 liters, below the World Health Organization's recommended minimum of 100 liters per day for basic sanitation, hygiene, and drinking.
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777632 June 2017
Fact #54 (8/8/17)
On July 19, 2017, Israel’s military and Civil Administration forces confiscated two water tanks in Kh Tall al-Himma in the northern Jordan Valley, along with a pump from a spring used as the community’s main source of water. (Solar panels were confiscated there on July 5.) The forces then cut a pipe used to bring water from a natural spring to a reservoir in the community of Kh Um al-Jmal, used for livestock and irrigation.
http://www.btselem.org/ota
Fact #55 (8/15/17)
Cancer rates in Gaza are rising steeply. In 2016, there were 90 cases per 100,000 people, compared with 65 in 2010.
The rates are worryingly high given the unusually young population, with 60% of the patients under 25.
Health workers blame the impact of three consecutive wars on Gaza, which have left poisonous elements in the water and soil, including depleted uranium. Daily use of insecticides by Israel to clear border areas is also blamed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/22/gaza-electrcity-shortages-hamas-israel-blockade-children
Fact #56 (8/22/17)
In Gaza, more than 97% of the water table is unfit for domestic use.
The water’s high salinity and pollution are contributing to a 13–14% increase each year in the number of people admitted to the hospital with kidney problems.
As the deepest part of the water table is being tapped, the water’s chloride and nitrate levels rise, which can cause congenital cyanosis in babies and play a role in developing cancers.
Microbiological pollution, caused by fecal bacteria, comes from wastewater and agricultural runoff. Many children in Gaza have parasites and worms and suffer from diarrhea and malnutrition.
Ammunition fired by Israel during its wars on Gaza have caused toxic chemical pollution.
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-war-scarred-gaza-pollution-health-woes.html
Fact #57 (8/29/17)
Medical Aid for Palestinians reports that Gaza’s water treatment and desalination plants can “only operate minimal services” due to the electricity crisis, and 73% of Gaza’s shoreline “is now dangerously polluted”—which has already led to the death of a five-year-old boy last month after he fell ill from the contamination after swimming.
The amount of untreated or partially treated waste-water released into the ocean increased from 90,000 cubic metres/day in 2012 to 100,000 cubic metres/day in 2016, and is now 108,000 cubic metres/day.
This equates to 43 Olympic-size swimming pools of poorly treated sewage being dumped into the Mediterranean every day.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778835 Ma’an august 25, 2017
“Gaza Ten Years Later,” United Nations Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, July 2017, PDF
Fact #58 (9/5/17)
Despite Israel’s obligation under the Oslo Accords to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles off the Gaza coastline, Israel restricts the range to six nautical miles.
This has led to overfishing in the small area, resulting in a decreased fish population and depletion of fish breeding grounds. And now the sea is contaminated with sewage.
Since January 2017, Israel has seized at least five fishing boats, detained at least 14 Palestinian fishermen, shot and injured six, and killed one fisherman who drowned after Israeli forces sunk his boat.
http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20170129_killing_the_fishing_sector Jan 2017
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777694 June 18, 2017
Fact #59 (9/12/17)
The sewage pouring into Gaza’s waters has affected Gaza’s already dire fishing industry.
In 2000, Gaza had about 10,000 fishermen. Today, there are roughly 4,000, whose income supports 50,000 persons. However, about half the fishermen are out of work, since their boats are out of commission and cannot be repaired due to the blockade of necessary raw materials.
95% of Gaza’s fishermen live below the poverty line. These families belong to the 80% of Gaza’s overall population who rely on humanitarian aid.
http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20170129_killing_the_fishing_sector Jan 2017
Fact #60 (9/19/17)
People in Gaza must buy expensive tankered water. Each cubic meter of desalinated water cost 25 to 30 shekels ($6.50 to $7.80), compared to 1 to 3 shekels from the water system.
In Gaza , 90% of the population of 2 million live under the poverty line, 85% depend on UNRWA, World Food Program, and other charities’ rations and food. The unemployment rate is 65%.
http://www.ewash.org/news/in-the-news/haaretz-think-gaza-strip-next-time-you-drink-tap-water
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/19/unlivable_gaza_on_verge_of_collapse
Fact #61 (9/26/17)
In the West Bank, water availability went from 118 million cubic metres in 1995 to 87 cubic metres in 2014—while the population increased from 1.25 million to 2.7 million people.
Decaying infrastructure, regular Israeli demolitions of Palestinian water pipeline construction, and Israel’s restrictions on Palestinians’ water consumption have severely affected Palestinian access to water.
Nearly 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank do not have access to running water.
http://www.lifegate.com/people/news/israeli-palestinian-water-conflict, April 2017
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777632 June 14, 2017
Fact #62 (10/3/17)
More than 96% of Gaza's water is unfit for drinking. For domestic use other than for drinking,
—50% of residents receives water for only 8 hours every four days
—30% receives water for only 8 hours every three days
—20% receives water for only 8 hours every two days
“Gaza Ten Years Later,” UN Country Team in the OPT, July 2017, pdf https://unsco.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/gaza_10_years_later_-_11_july_2017.pdf
Fact #63 (10/10/17)
Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza destroyed two major water reservoirs. Today, 1/3 of the water pumped from the aquifer is lost due to the old and war-damaged pipelines.
Israel’s approval is mandatory for bringing in materials, spare parts, equipment, and experts to fix or maintain water projects, including those operated or funded by international agencies.
Hand on the Switch, January 2017 http://gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/infrastructure/Hand_on_the_Switch-EN.pdf
Fact #64 (10/17/17)
Israel impedes the development of new Palestinian water infrastructure, destroys and confiscates existing infrastructure, and limits Palestinian access to local water sources such as fresh water springs, drilled wells, and rainwater cisterns.
In previous summers, residents of the Palestinian city of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, received running water once every five to eight days.
This year, the water supply dropped to once every ten to fourteen days.
Nablus residents must live on only 65 liters/person/day. In some neighborhoods, and for people in the refugee camps, average consumption is 50 liters/person/day. (The WHO minimum is 100 liters/person/day.) (B’Tselem, Sept. 13, 2017)
http://www.btselem.org/water/20170913_acute_water_shortage_in_nablus
Fact #65 (10/24/17)
Electricity outages in the Gaza Strip range from 18 to 20 hours a day. As a result, nearly 40% of areas planted with seasonal vegetable crops are at risk due to irregular irrigation.
The increased—already exhorbitant—prices for pumped water leave farmers with hard choices:
• paying the additional costs (taking loans, going further into debt)
• raising the cost of the produce and losing competitive advantage
• decreasing the period of irrigation thereby reducing the quality of the produce
• prioritizing crops that can survive on minimal water
• abandoning farming altogether.
(United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, Sept. 2017)
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/energy-crisis-takes-its-toll-palestinian-farmers-gaza
Fact #66 (10/31/17)
The Separation Wall and illegal settlements already cut off Palestinians from the best water extraction points.
When completed, the Wall will cut off Palestinians from areas that would yield an additional 90 million cubic metres (23 billion gallons) annually.
(Palestine Monitor Factbook, 2015) http://www.palestinemonitor.org/details.php?id=pezte3a10667y0cifjtlt9
Fact #67 (11/7/17)
In Palestine, small-scale farmers, herders, and fishermen face a high risk of poverty due to Israel’s imposed water shortages and land degradation, and extreme weather events driven by climate change.
111,310 farmers own agricultural small-holdings in Palestine. Agriculture, fisheries, and forestry employ 7.4% and 8.8% of all employed men and women, respectively.
(United Nations Country Team, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Common Country Analysis, 2016)
https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files/common_country_analysis.pdf
Fact #68 (11/14/17)
In Gaza, 40% of the medications needed to treat patients are not available. Cancer patients are dying daily because there is no medicine for them and because they are prevented from leaving Gaza to receive care.
95% of the 2 million Gaza residents may now be at risk of waterborne diseases.
(Dr. Mona El-Farra, MECA newsletter 2017)
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/meca-newsletters-reports/
(UN Economic and Social Council, May 2017)
https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A6BAAFBCB0A4A2098525813F005B1376
Fact #69 (11/21/17)
Of the 142 proposed water, sanitation, and hygiene projects in Gaza, Israel has allowed only 64 to be completed—less than half.
Of the 5,373 “dual use” items submitted for water, health, and sanitation projects, an alarming 2,950 are still awaiting Israel’s approval. And only 856 items have been imported—less than 16% of the total needed.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/file/bp-treading-water-gaza-reconstruction-mechanism-220317-enpdf-0
Fact #70 (11/28/17)
Residents of al-Walaja, a village in the occupied West Bank near Bethlehem, are forbidden to access a large portion of their land because Israel has relocated a checkpoint.
On that land is the second-largest spring in the occupied West Bank, one of the main water sources for the residents’ livestock to bathe in and drink from. Residents have tended to the spring, fields, and farming terraces for generations. It was also a recreational spring for the people of the surrounding areas, who flocked there to picnic and swim.
Israel has surrounded the spring with a fence, built a visitors center and a restaurant, and turned it into one of the entrances to Jerusalem’s metropolitan park, off-limits to residents of al-Walaja and Bethlehem.
http://maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=779487
Fact #71 (12/5/17)
Palestinians’ limited access to water not only contributes to the erosion of their health, income, and livelihoods, but also increases their exposure to intimidation and violence while they are fetching water from distant sources.
These factors combined with Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes and livelihood-related structures (50,000 in the last 50 years) create a coercive environment that increases the risk of forcible transfer.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/water-tankering-projects-target-most-vulnerable-communities-area-c
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Fact #72 (12/12/17)
30% of The Dead Sea’s shore is in Palestinian territory, but Israel forbids Palestinians from developing and accessing their shore.
The Dead Sea is rich in natural resources. Israel earns $3 billion each year from extracted products (and generates $291 million from 15 shoreline hotels).
The estimated value of a Palestinian Dead Sea mineral extraction industry would be $918 million.
Israel also diverts Dead Sea water to its settlements. That and its over-use of water for extracting minerals cause the sea level to drop about 3 feet per year. (Al-Haq, August 2015)
https://medium.com/@alhaq/facts-on-the-ground-542fb4d17d08
Fact #73 (12/19/17)
The occupied West Bank is home to more than 160 factories in illegal Israeli settlements and Israeli industrial zones.
The factories produce chemicals, aluminium, leather, batteries, plastics, cement, canned foods, fibreglass, rubber, alcoholic beverages, ceramics, marble, detergents, cooking gas, and pesticides.
They pollute Palestinians’ water and air, deplete their natural resources, threaten their health, and degrade their agricultural land.
This has dire economic repercussions. The water released by many of these factories are a major source of pollution affecting Palestinian agricultural land and plants. The high mineral content of the pollutants has made it impossible to cultivate citrus crops and other fruit.
(World Health Organization, May 2016) http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA69/A69_INF6-en.pdf
Fact #74 (12/26/17)
No Israeli settlement, except those built within the municipality of Jerusalem, has a sewerage system. Settlements release their wastewater into Palestinian watercourses and land, further exacerbating pollution and degrading Palestinian agricultural water supplies.
(World Health Organization, May 2016) http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA69/A69_INF6-en.pdf
Fact #75 (1/2/18)
At least 34 Israeli dumping sites located throughout the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have destroyed thousands of dunams of agricultural land (1000 dunhams = 247 acres), negatively affected tens of thousands more, and severely polluted groundwater, surface water supplies, valley watercourses, and springs. (World Health Organization, May 2016)
http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA69/A69_INF6-en.pdf
Fact #76 (1/9/18)
In East Jerusalem, only 53% of the population has legal access to the water grid. Tens of thousands of residents are forced to install pirate connections, purchase water tanks, and operate pumps.
A third of the population lacks sewage connections. In entire neighborhoods, where the houses are not connected to the sewage network, the residents have to use cesspits in their yard.
(Association for Civil Rights in Israel, May 2015)
https://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EJ-Facts-and-Figures-2015.pdf
http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem#barrier
(United Nations Economic and Social Council, May 2017)
https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A6BAAFBCB0A4A2098525813F005B1376
Fact #77 (1/16/18)
From the beginning of Zionist strategy, Palestine’s water resources played a crucial role.
In 1919, the World Zionist Organization presented a map at the Paris Peace Conference that anticipated the level of water needed for the projected Jewish state to develop an industrial and agricultural economic base and to provide a Western style of life for Jewish immigrants.
The World Zionist Organization stated: “The economic life of Palestine...depends on the available water supply. It is, therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water resources already feeding the country, but also to be able to conserve and control them at their sources.”
E. Hagopian, The Primacy of Water in the Zionist Project, Arab Studies Qly, Fall 2016
Fact #78 (1/23/18)
Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who has spent the last month in an Israeli military prison, has been denied bail. She was arrested in her West Bank village of Nabi Saleh for slapping a soldier who had first slapped her, and—like many of the 300 Palestinian children currently in Israel’s prisons—could face long years in jail.
Israel’s military has killed and injured many Nabi Saleh residents since 2009, when they began holding weekly demonstrations against the theft of their land and natural water spring, Ein Al-Qaws , to build the illegal Halamish settlement.
The village’s 600 residents receive only 12 hours of running water a from Israel, while the settlers in Halamish have running water 24 hours a day and enjoy a large swimming pool.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/nabi-saleh-silent-ethnic-cleansing-170702123734851.html, Sept 2017
https://www.btselem.org/statistics/minors_in_custody, Jan. 2018
Fact #79 (1/30/18)
In 1967, after Israel completed its conquest of all of Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, it took further control over Palestinian water resources through Military Orders 92 and 291. These permitted Israel to 1) monopolize access to Palestinian water and 2) routinely deny Palestinians the right to drill wells or repair existing ones.
E. Hagopian, The Primacy of Water in the Zionist Project, Arab Studies Qly, Fall 2016
Fact #80 (2/6/18)
Winter flooding in the Gaza Strip threatens over 560,000 Palestinians with displacement and property loss due to the precarious state of infrastructure and housing.
The recurrent flooding carries severe threats to health by contaminating water sources, overflowing the sewage systems, and increasing the risk of waterborne disease.
More than 50% of Gaza’s water infrastructure was destroyed by Israel during its 2014 war on Gaza. Since then, Israel has allowed only 64 of the 142 proposed water, sanitation, and hygiene projects to be completed—less than half.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Dec., 2017, in http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=Tyydxqa95643562476aTyydxq
UN OCHA, 2018 https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/occupied-palestinian-territory/document/2018-humanitarian-needs-overview-occupied
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015)
unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1068
Fact #81 (2/13/18)
The Palestinian village Wadi Fukin is suffering from floods due to expansion of a nearby illegal Israeli settlement.
Natural areas that absorb rainwater and slow its flow have been turned into asphalt and concrete, which funnel the water quickly down the mountain towards the village.
Because the water is no longer absorbed into the ground, the past two years have seen a 50% decline in the water supply to the village’s 11 springs and rainwater pools. The amount of water in the main spring has declined by two thirds in the last three years.
Sewage from another illegal Israeli settlement has contaminated the village’s fields.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/liberal-jerusalem-suburb-s-expansion-is-hurting-a-palestinian-village-1.5769531
Fact #82 (2/20/18)
In the occupied West Bank, 649,000 Palestinians (22% of the population) are forced to suffer lack of access to water and poor water quality. This includes 156,000 people who are either unconnected to a water network or receiving water only once a week or less.
97% of Gaza’s 2 million residents (including 991,400 children)—whose water access is controlled by Israel—are without clean drinking water.
The violence of Israel’s military occupation fills Palestinian hospital beds with patients injured by Israeli soldiers, attacks by illegal settlers, and Israel’s air assaults. The restricted access to clean water adds even more pressure on already overstressed Palestinian public health institutions.
(UN OCHA Humanitarian Response Information)
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/occupied-palestinian-territory/document/2018-humanitarian-needs-overview-occupied
https://electronicintifada.net/content/west-bank-villagers-suffer-sewer-politics/17811
Fact #83 (2/28/18)
In the Jordan Valley, 40% of Palestinians live in basic forms of shelter.
Israel’s systematic demolitions of their homes, denial of building permits (including toilets and structures for privacy)—and destruction of water pipelines and water tanks—make it impossible to maintain a sanitary environment, particularly for the personal hygiene needs of women and girls.
Unpacking Gender in Coercive Environments: the Case of the Jordan Valley, pdf
www.alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/unpacking-gender-in-coercive-environments-the-case-of-the-jordan-valleycategoryid10categoryid10
Fact #84 (3/6/18)
Heavy rains and stormy weather, such as affected Gaza in January, cause floods that could disperse landmines.
According to the United Nations Mine Action Service, since Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, approximately 6,000 items of unexploded ordnance could still be in the ground in the Gaza Strip, where 16 people have been killed and 97 injured, including 48 children, due to contact with explosive remnants of war.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/heavy-rains-floods-and-even-hail-batter-israels-north-in-worst-storm-of-season/
(International Committee of the Red Cross)
http://blogs.icrc.org/ilot/2017/04/04/gaza-fun-lessons-that-could-save-a-life/ April 2017
Fact #85 (3/13/18)
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians are exposed to more than 15 Israeli waste treatment facilities that process waste produced in Israel. Six facilities handle dangerous hazardous waste.
Palestinians are denied information about what goes on in these plants, whether accidents have occurred—and the risks to water sources, air quality, and local residents’ health.
Israel makes it more profitable to build waste treatment facilities in the West Bank than inside Israel by allowing few regulations and lax supervision, and by offering financial incentives such as tax breaks and government subsidies.
http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201712_made_in_israel
Fact #86 (3/20/18)
Throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians.
97% percent of Gaza’s 2 million residents are without clean drinking water due to Israel’s destruction of Palestinian wells and water infrastructure.
In the West Bank, the 650,000 people living in Israel’s illegal settlements are allotted six times more water than the 2.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis
https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/how-israeli-settlements-stifle-palestines-economy
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/#sthash.BWiYB9dI.dpuf
Fact #87 (3/27/18)
The Gaza Strip’s 2 million residents depend on the coastal aquifer for water. Only 60 million cubic meters of water can be pumped annually without compromising the aquifer’s ability to renew itself.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza's water infrastructure and its obstructions to repairs; population growth; and low rainfall have led to overpumping—about four times as much water every year.
Overpumping causes seawater to penetrate, which salinates the water table. The concentration of chloride (salts) in Gaza’s wells is now between 400 and 2,000 mg/litre, while the standard is 250 mg/litre.
90% of the drinking water in Gaza exceeds the maximum salinity standard of the World Health Organization.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/22/gaza-electrcity-shortages-hamas-israel-blockade-children
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-expert-warns-97-of-gaza-drinking-water-contaminated-by-sewage-salt-1.5747876
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180321-97-of-water-in-gaza-is-polluted/
Fact #88 (4/3/18)
An estimated 80,000 Bedouin Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship live in communities unrecognized by Israel, and are thus denied access to water, as well as other basic state services and infrastructure.
This month (April 2018), Israel plans to demolish the entire Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran and force the 350 Palestinian residents to be homeless. In its place, Israel will build a Jewish settlement.
Umm al-Hiran has undergone persistent harassment and lived under constant threat of demolitions. During a 2017 raid to demolish homes in Umm al-Hiran, Israeli police shot and killed a 50-year-old Palestinian math teacher.
Israel’s demolitions of Bedouin structures doubled in 2017, with 2,220 structures demolished compared to 1,158 in 2016. Residents face heavy fines unless they demolish their homes themselves. Approximately 70% of the demolitions were undertaken by the owners.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/israel-razes-palestinian-bedouin-village-113th-time-170517075143632.html
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-evacuate-destroy-entire-palestinian-village-umm-al-hiran
Fact #89 (4/10/18)
In the Gaza Strip, since the nonviolent Great March of Return protest began on March 30, Israel has killed more than 31 peaceful demonstrators and wounded more than 2,500 (dozens in critical condition), including children and youth.
In the Gaza Strip (called a large open-air prison), two million people are forced to live inside 139 square miles. More than 40% are under fifteen years old.
Israel controls all the water in the Gaza Strip, using water in its arsenal of weapons—
• Poor access to water and poor water quality contribute to 26% of all reported disease.
• The prevalence of chronic malnutrition is driven by the lack of safe drinking water.
• 140,000 of the 274,000 children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition and stunting.
• 40,000 children suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.
• Untreated chronic malnutrition can lead to debilitating, impaired physical growth and cognitive development.
Middle East Children’s Alliace, April 7, 2018, https://www.mecaforpeace.org
UN 2018 humanitarian needs overview of the Gaza Strip
https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/hno_20_12_2017_final.pdf
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=Tyydxqa95643562476aTyydxq
Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies, 2017
www.inss.org.il/publication/gazas-water-sanitation-crisis-implications-public-health
Fact #90 (4/17/18)
Two million people In the Gaza Strip are forced to live inside 139 square miles. More than 40% are under fifteen years old.
Because Israel destroyed, and has refusal to repair, most of the Gaza Strip’s sanitation infrastructure, water contamination is responsible for 26% of all disease.
At least 25% of all childhood disease in Gaza is water-associated, and 60% of kindergarten-age children suffer from at least one parasitic infection.
Contaminated water has increased waterborne diseases, including acute diarrhea, parasite infections, liver and kidney diseases, and “blue baby syndrome.”
For months at a time the Gaza Strip has had only four to six hours of electricity a day. The chronic electricity shortage has meant pumps don’t work, causing large sewage lakes to form. One lake overflowed, drowning five people in a nearby village.
The equivalent of 43 Olympic-size swimming pools of poorly treated sewage is dumped into the Mediterranean every day.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778835
“Gaza Ten Years Later,” United Nations Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, July 2017, PDF
Fact #91 (4/24/18)
Two million people In the Gaza are forced by Israel to live inside 139 square miles.
In 2014, during its assault on Gaza, Israel destroyed more than 50% of Gaza’s water infrastructure.
As a result, people must buy prohibitively expensive tankered water.
90% of the population on Gaza live under the poverty line. 85% depend on UNRWA, the World Food Program, and other charities’ rations and food.
www.ewash.org/news/in-the-news/haaretz-think-gaza-strip-next-time-you-drink-tap-water
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/19/unlivable_gaza_on_verge_of_collapse
Fact #92 (5/1/18)
Palestinians are restricted from 91% of the fertile Jordan Valley due to illegal Israeli settlements and closures by the Israeli military.
Israel forbids Palestinians from digging new wells, repairing their old ones—or even setting up cisterns to collect rainwater.
Trucked-in water is prohibitively expensive, therefore farmers are driven by necessity to build cisterns. But since Israeli permits are impossible to obtain, Israel demolishes the them.
As reported in Haaretz in 2017, soon after the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank, Israeli leaders discussed how to expel the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under military occupation. Israel wanted the land but not the people who lived on it. Levi Eshkol, then Israel’s prime minister, proposed: “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/video-forced-drought-hits-jordan-valley-farmers-israel-steals-their-water
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionisms-calm-destruction-palestine
Fact #93 (5/8/18)
Israel cut down dozens of olive trees, damaged dozens more, and destroyed acres of private Palestinian farmland in the West Bank town Bruqin, so that its water company, Mekorot, could build new water and sewage pipelines for illegal Israeli settlements.
Settlers and the Israeli army regularly harass the residents of Bruqin. The farmers face verbal and physical attacks while working on their remaining fields and are often denied access to their own land by the Israeli army.
Israel’s control of more than 80% of the water in the West Bank, its illegal settlements, and its Separation Wall, have deprived the Palestinian economy of at least 63% of the most fertile and best grazing land.
At most, 35% of irrigable Palestinian land is allowed to be irrigated, costing the Palestinian economy more than 100,000 jobs per year.
International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Bruqin, occupied Palestine
European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #94 (5/15/18)
As of May 14, 2018, since the nonviolent Great March of Return protest began on March 30, Israel has killed at least 107 people and wounded about 12,000 people.
U.S. taxpayers supply Israel with $3.8 billion in weapons every year.
Israel uses these weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians living under its military occupation—including the deprivation of water.
In Gaza, Israel’s destruction of wells and water infrastructure has forced 97% of Gaza's two million residents (991,400 are children) to live without clean drinking water. More than 96% of the water is unfit for drinking.
Today marks 70 years since the Nakba (the catastrophe), when half the Arab population of Palestine—more than 750,000 people—were forced to flee or were expelled by the establishment of the state of Israel. Israel forbids Palestinian refugees to return to their land and homes.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/gaza-protest-latest-updates-
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/world/middleeast/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-military-aid.html
www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis
“Gaza Ten Years Later,” United Nations Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, July 2017, pdf
https://unsco.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/gaza_10_years_later_-_11_july_2017.pdf
Fact #95 (5/22/18)
Many consider Israel to be a world leader in water treatment. BUT—
—Since 2016, Israel has demolished more than 50 Palestinian water and sanitation structures in the West Bank, and prevents Palestinians from building new sewage infrastructure and wastewater treatment plants. Untreated wastewater is overflowing its containment pipes, contaminating the groundwater.
—Israel has built at least 15 unregulated waste treatment plants in the occupied West Bank to process the dangerous substances produced by Israel and the illegal settlements—sewage sludge, hazardous waste, infectious medical waste, used oils and solvents, metals, batteries, and electronic industry byproducts. Palestinians have no access to information about what risks the facilities pose to their water sources, air quality, and health.
Free-flowing sewage in the West Bank and in Gaza damages crops and poisons animals, severely reduces Palestinians’ income, and greatly impacts the health of residents. The West Bank village of Bruqin, for example, has a disproportionately high rate of hospitalization. 44% of Palestinian children in rural areas suffer from diarrhea—the biggest killer of children under 5 years old in the world—because of sewage and poor water quality.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/world/middleeast/water-revolution-in-israel-overcomes-any-threat-of-drought.html
http://imemc.org/article/made-in-israel-exploiting-palestinian-land-for-treatment-of-israeli-waste/ Dec. 2017
https://electronicintifada.net/content/west-bank-villagers-suffer-sewer-politics/17811
ISM December 2017 https://palsolidarity.org/2017/12/settlement-pollutes-palestinian-olive-groves-with-sewage-water/
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/05/israels-water-genocide/
Fact #96 (5/29/18)
The lack of clean water is just one of the excruciating hardships facing medical personnel in Gaza's massively overcrowded hospitals.
Since March 30, when the Great March of Return began, 323 emergency medical workers have been hit by live fire and gas bombs, and one worker was killed. 37 ambulances were damaged.
In those same weeks in Gaza, the Israeli army killed 112 Palestinian nonviolent protesters (including 13 children) and injured 13,190 (including 2,096 children). 7,618 injuries are related to live ammunition or rubber bullets; 785 people were shot in the head, neck, chest, and/or back; and 27 needed leg amputations. 5,572 injuries were from tear-gas suffocation.
MECA for Peace, 5/24/2018, http://madisonrafah.org/
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780149
Fact #97 (6/5/18)
In April 2017, 40 Israeli soldiers raided the Palestinian West Bank village Bardala, bulldozed its water outlets, destroyed pipelines to farms, and confiscated 168 metres of pipes that belonged to farmers and the village.
A month later, Israeli forces opened fire at the village's peaceful Right to Water march of 500 people, injuring five youth and detaining one youth for 48 hours.
Bardala depends on agriculture. In 1964, its wells provided 200 cubic metres (52,834 gallons) of spring water/hour. The village built an 67-metre-deep well that provided 300 cubic metres (79,251 gallons) of spring water/hour.
After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, Israel and its water company, Mekorot, built several 300-metre-deep wells on Bardala's lands, 200 metres from the village's original well.
In 1974 Israel and Mekorot closed the Palestinian wells and demanded Bardala residents pay to receive 240 cubic metres of water from their own springs.
In 2006, Mekorot further reduced the supply to 60 cubic metres of water. This has had a disastrous effect on crops, livestock, and residents, whose population since 1964 has increased from 500 to 5000 people.
https://www.stopthewall.org/2017/05/08/bardala-marches-right-water
https://stopthewall.org/2017/04/29/join-our-march-right-water
Fact #98 (6/12/18)
Every day, 108,000 cubic meters (28,530,581 gallons) of raw sewage are discharged into the sea around Gaza.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza restricts more than 70% of the materials critically needed to repair Gaza’s sewage-treatment facilities, so waste flows through neighborhoods and also into the sea. The sea is 73% polluted.
In 2000, Gaza had 10,000 fishermen. Today, there are 4,000, half of whom are out of work because the blockade prevents them from repairing their boats.
Despite Israel’s obligation under the Oslo Accords to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles off the Gaza coastline, the most it ever allowed was 12 nautical miles and currently the limit is 3–4 nautical miles. Often Israel prohibits fishing altogether.
The Israeli navy attacks Palestinian fishermen even when their boats are within the limit. Most recently, one fisherman was killed, five wounded, and 25 were arrested. Three boats were confiscated; others were sabotaged along with dozens of fishing nets.
Soldiers have forced fishermen at gunpoint to take off their clothes and swim to the navy vessels.
A number of times, Israeli soldiers fired at the fishermen, then propelled wastewater at the boats.
http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20170129_killing_the_fishing_sector
www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/31/children-swim-sewage-floods-gaza-beach
http://www.mezan.org/en/post/22718
https://electronicintifada.net/content/life-septic-tank/20826
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/palestine-gaza-fishermen-death-israel-fishing-zone-war-fire.html#ixzz5HTOlc1Y9
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/palestine-gaza-fishermen-death-israel-fishing-zone-war-fire.html#ixzz5HTOdbpC9
Fact #99 (6/19/18)
In summer 2017, the 180,000 residents of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, suffered an acute water shortage in addition to the year-round lack of sufficient water. Israel controls the water in Palestine, prevents Palestinians from digging new wells and repairing old ones, and refuses to sell them additional, necessary, water.
Residents get their water from out-of-date water drills. A fifth of that water is lost to leaks in the old pipes and other technical problems.
Nablus residents must survive on an average of 65 liters/person/day. (100 litres/person/day is the WHO minimum.) In 2017, well output dropped by 30%. Supply went down to once every ten to fourteen days.
20% of Nablus residents, who live in the refugee camps and in about 10 neighborhoods where the water pressure is lower, have an average consumption of 50 liters/person/day.
In 1996, Israel sold the municipality a small amount of water per hour, but in the decade that followed, it delivered the water intermittently, and stopped delivery altogether in 2006.
https://www.btselem.org/water/20170913_acute_water_shortage_in_nablus
Fact #100 (6/26/18)
In 2017, Israel built more than 10,000 housing units in illegal settlements on Palestinian land—more than double the total of 2016.
Today, between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis live in the settlements, roughly 11% of the total Jewish Israeli population.
Israeli settlers use six times more water than do the 3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
In one month, May 2018, over 60% of the Palestinian structures that Israel destroyed to make room for its illegal settlements were demolished or seized in one day. These included three water systems, six homes, eight livelihood structures, and four solar-power systems. Eleven of the structures had been funded by the EU.
The affected twelve West Bank communities (1,300 people) are in an area designated by Israel as a “firing zone” for military training, and are thus at heightened risk of forcible transfer. In late 2017 and early 2018, the residents’ access to services and livelihoods was impeded by additional movement restrictions and repeated military exercises.
www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2017_hrp_draft5_20_12_2017_v2.pdf
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/50-years-illegal-settlements/index.html www.ochaopt.org/content/west-bank-demolitions-and-displacement-may-2018
Fact #101 (7/3/18)
Israel’s destruction and disrepair of wells and water infrastructure has forced 97% of Gaza’s two million residents (991,400 are children) to live without clean drinking water.
At least 25% of all childhood disease in Gaza is water-associated. 60% of kindergarten-age children suffer from at least one parasitic infection.
The prevalence of chronic malnutrition is driven by the lack of safe drinking water. 140,000 of the 274,000 children under five in Gaza suffer from chronic malnutrition and stunting. 40,000 children suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.
“Gaza Ten Years Later,” United Nations Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, July 2017, PDF
Middle East Children’s Alliance, www.mecaforpeace.org
Fact #102 (7/10/18)
While Israel is considering buiding 1,000 new illegal settlement housing units east of Jerusalem—sewage from a new illegal settlement in the West Bank flooded and drowned Palestinian lands worked by residents of the village of Turmus Ayya. Farmland, animals, agriculture, health, and livelihoods are affected.
The ongoing sewage flood began when the private Palestinian property was confiscated by the Israeli army for settlements. There is no sewage treatment facility for the new settlement, nor for others nearby.
44% of Palestinian children in rural areas suffer from diarrhea because of sewage and poor water quality. Diarrhea is the biggest killer of children under 5 years old in the world.
700,000 Israeli settlers live illegally in the occupied West Bank.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180703-israel-seeks-1000-new-settlement-units-in-east-jerusalem/
http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem#barrier
United Nations Economic and Social Council, May 2017
https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A6BAAFBCB0A4A2098525813F005B1376
http://english.pnn.ps/2018/07/02/settlement-pumping-sewage-water-towards-land-of-village-near-ramallah/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/new-west-bank-settlement-s-sewage-overflowing-into-palestinian-fields-1.6225848?utm_campaign=newsletter-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=smartfocus&utm_content=https%3A%2F%2F
www.haaretz.com%2Fisrael-news%2Fnew-west-bank-settlement-s-sewage-overflowing-into-palestinian-fields-1.6225848
Fact #103 (7/17/18)
In Gaza, the devastating water crisis and electricity shortage have forced hospitals to reduce the cleaning and sterilizing of medical facilities.
The hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. Since the Great March of Return demonstrations began on March 30, 2018, more than 15,500 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli forces.
Of the 8,221 Palestinians requiring hospitalization, 63% were limb injuries, and nearly half (4,023) were the result of gunshot wounds.
61 Palestinians received amputations, 11 of them children.
10 Palestinians have been left paralyzed. More than 1,400 Palestinians are at risk of longer-term physical disability.
Of the 138 people killed by the Israeli army so far this year, 26 were children. 21 of those children were targeted in Gaza with live bullets (11 of those children shot in the head and neck).
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2018-03-05/cutting-unrwa-funding-could-put-gaza-on-the-brink-and-backfire-at-israel
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180713-un-over-1400-palestinian-protesters-in-gaza-may-suffer-long-term-disability/
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180702-israel-killed-25-palestinian-children-this-year/
Fact #104 (7/25/18)
Israel forbids Palestinians from building in Area C (a zone comprising 60% of the West Bank). As a result, residents cannot dig wells. Israel also forbids residents access to the water line that goes up to the Israeli military outposts on their land. Residents must pay for expensive water trucked in from the nearest town.
When Israel decides to use land around a Bedouin compound for its military exercises, families are forced to leave and sleep outside for days. They return to demolished dwellings and animal shelters, trampled crops and pastures, and turned-up earth where tanks passed through.
Since 2014, at least three Palestinians have been killed and five injured by unexploded ordnance left behind during military exercises in the Jordan Valley.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/between-israels-bullets-and-bulldozers/24996
Fact #105 (7/31/18)
Due to the low quantities of water available to Palestinian farmers, only 6.8% of the cultivated land in the West Bank is irrigated.
Israel confiscates 82% of Palestinian groundwater in the West Bank for use inside Israel’s borders and in its settlements.
(EWASH and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, cited in European Parliamentary Research Service, 2016) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015)
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf
Fact #106 (8/7/18)
Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman have returned home to Nabi Saleh after serving their eight-month sentences in an Israeli military prison.
Ahed Tamimi was incarcerated after she slapped one of the soldiers who invaded her family’s yard. She had just learned that Israeli soldiers shot her 15-year-old cousin in the head at close range.
Israel’s military has killed and injured many Nabi Saleh residents since 2009, when they began holding weekly demonstrations against the theft of their land and natural water spring, Ein Al-Qaws , to build the illegal Halamish settlement.
The village’s 600 residents receive only 12 hours of running water a from Israel, while the settlers in Halamish have running water 24 hours a day and enjoy a large swimming pool.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/nabi-saleh-silent-ethnic-cleansing-170702123734851.html, Sept 2017
Fact #107 (8/14/18)
In the occupied West Bank, Israel forces 649,000 Palestinians (22% of the population of 2.95 million) to suffer lack of access to water and poor water quality. This includes 156,000 people who are unconnected to a water network or receiving water only once a week or less.
97% of Gaza’s 2 million residents (including 991,400 children)—whose water access is also controlled by Israel—are without clean drinking water.
The violence of Israel’s military occupation fills Palestinian hospital beds with patients injured by Israeli soldiers, attacks by illegal settlers, and Israel’s air assaults. The restricted access to clean water adds even more pressure on already overstressed Palestinian public health institutions.
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/occupied-palestinian-territory/document/2018-humanitarian-needs-overview-occupied
Fact #108 (8/21/18)
In July 2018, Israel further tightened the blockade of Gaza, banning the entry of construction materials, water pumps, spare parts, generators, clothing, blankets, mattresses, and other vital items.
Israel also banned the entry of fuel and cooking gas, including emergency fuel supplied by the UN. Gaza’s severe and chronic lack of electricity makes fuel necessary to power generators in homes, businesses, and critical civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and water and sewage facilities.
Other high-priority items prevented from entering are mobile pumps to dewater flooded areas, water-testing and disinfection material, essential electromechanical equipment, sulfite-resistant cement, and epoxy paints for insulation.
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620527/mb-gaza-israel-blockade-civilians-270818-en.pdf
Fact #109 (8/28/18)
In July 2018, Israel further tightened the blockade of Gaza. These latest restrictions are stopping critical water projects, including
—A major desalination plant in Gaza city that would provide water to 200,000 people
—Two water tanks and a water-booster system that would provide water to over 190,000 people
—Facilities that would treat wastewater for hundreds of thousands of households and reduce the contamination load discharged to the sea.
Israel’s imposed restrictions are also stopping water-related projects funded by international donors, amounting to tens of millions of US dollars.
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620527/mb-gaza-israel-blockade-civilians-270818-en.pdf
Fact #110 (9/4/18)
Israel controls the extent to which Palestinians can provide for themselves, as well as the ability of donors to deliver urgent assistance to allow electricity, health, and water systems to recover from Israel’s bombardments and neglect.
In Gaza, at least 97% of the water is undrinkable. People are forced to buy expensive drinking water from private vendors with little or no quality control.
53% of the population in Gaza lives below the poverty line. Approximately 34% (656,000 people) lives in “deep poverty” on less than $3.60 per day.
One million Palestinians in Gaza don’t have enough food to eat, despite receiving food assistance or other forms of support. More than 49% of people in Gaza of working age are unemployed—71% of women and 60% of youth including 21,508 students graduating from higher education institutions in 2017—11,601 men and 9,907 women.
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620527/mb-gaza-israel-blockade-civilians-270818-en.pdf
http://mezan.org/en/post/22365/Al+Mezan+Publishes+“University+Graduates+in+the+Gaza+Strip%3A+Unemployment+and+its+Impact+on+Human+Rights”+
Fact #111 (9/11/18)
Two weeks ago, Israel cut off all water supplies to the only school in the Palestinian West Bank village of Faroush Beit Dajan.
In the same village a few months earlier, the Israeli army shut off water supplies in an attempt to force the 1,200 residents to leave.
Israel denies Palestinians permits to build schools, then demolishes schools built without permits, making it more difficult or impossible for thousands of children to get an education. At least 44 Palestinian schools in the West Bank are at risk of full or partial demolition.
Over a third of Palestinian communities in Area C (the 60% of the West Bank where the Israeli military has exclusive control over building) do not have primary schools. The UN estimates that 10,000 children attend school in tents, shacks, or other structures without heating or air-conditioning. About 1,700 children walk five or more kilometers to school due to road closures, lack of passable roads or transportation, or other problems.
The long distances and fear of harassment by settlers or the military lead many parents to take their children out of school, with a disproportionate impact on girls.
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2018/9/5/israeli-occupation-cuts-off-water-to-school-for-palestinian-children
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/25/israel-army-demolishing-west-bank-schools
Fact #112 (9/25/18)
In August 2018, the Israeli navy again opened fire at Palestinian fishermen sailing off the Gaza coast. The warships seized one boat, detained the two fishermen and confiscated the fishing boat and equipment. The boat was one mile from the coast, well within the Israeli-enforced restricted fishing zone, when it was seized.
From the start of 2018, Israel has carried out 233 attacks on fishermen—killing one fisherman, injuring 15, detaining 41, and confiscating 13 fishing boats.
http://mezan.org/en/post/23190/Israeli+Naval+Forces+Open+Fire+at+Fishermen%2C+Detaining+Two+and+Seizing+Their+Boats+
Fact #113 (9/25/18)
Israel controls all Palestinian water resources in the West Bank. In 1995, 80% of the water was allotted for Israeli use and 20% for Palestinian use.
Today, the Palestinian population of the West Bank, which has nearly doubled since 1995, receives only three-quarters of that stipulated allotment, while Israelis enjoy an unlimited water supply.
https://www.btselem.org/water
Fact #114 (10/2/18)
Over the past two months, the Israeli military razed water pipelines more than four times in two adjacent Palestinian villages—under the pretext that they were looking for open holes that they claimed were "illegal."
Residents of the villages, Kardala and Bardala, live off agriculture and thus rely on water for irrigation as well as personal and household consumption.
After its 1967 occupation of Palestine, Israel allotted the residents only 240 cubic meters of water an hour. Israel has lowered this rate and now confines it to 140 cubic meters.
In the summer, when temperature is usually high, residents need double the quantity of water they would use during winter. Residents say Israel deliberately chooses the summer to destroy the water pipelines.
The average consumption of an Israeli settler illegally living in the northern Jordan Valley is 8 times more than that of a Palestinian citizen.
In the last few years, Israel has destroyed water pipelines almost daily.
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=q9xk81a98628259884aq9xk81
Fact #115 (10/9/18)
To meet their needs, Palestinians in the West Bank must purchase water from Israel’s national water company, Mekorot. The water reaches the Palestinian communities through hookups to Mekorot reservoirs located within illegal settlements.
Due to Israel’s neglect and refusal to repair pipelines and water grids, one-third of all water supplied to Palestinian cities and villages is lost to leakage.
https://www.btselem.org/water
Fact #116 (10/16/18)
In Gaza, as 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 diarrhea among young children
• undernutrition, which contributes to diseases and impedes growth (7.1% of children are being stunted in height)
• anemia in 59.7% of schoolchildren
as Israel has killed at least 199 Palestinians in Gaza since March 2018, including 31 youth, and over 35% of children show symptoms of PTSD—
The U.S. is helping Israel put Palestinians’ health further at risk by planning to cut $300 million in funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees. The U.S. also plans to cancel $200 million in funds for relief programs in the West Bank and Gaza, and cancel $25 million for the East Jerusalem Hospital Network.
UNRWA’s health services are the only source of care for approximately 5 million Palestinian refugees. 70% of the 2 million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip are refugees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/world/middleeast/trump-administration-aid-palestinian-refugees-.html
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/10/refugee-palestinians-largest/
http://www.phr.org.il/en/safeguarding-gazan-social-determinants-health-april-2016/?pr=24
Fact #117 (10/23/18)
Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Israel uses sewage as a weapon against Palestinians.
For the second time this month, members of the illegal Israeli settlement Kfar Adummim flooded the village Khan Al-Ahmar with wastewater, as Israeli army bulldozers stormed the village in a drive to force villagers to leave.
The demolition and flooding of sewage are part of Israel’s plan to expand the settlement and create a region of contiguous Israeli control from Jerusalem almost to the Dead Sea, which would make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
Khan Al-Ahmar is home to about 181 Bedouin (half of them children), who are refugees from the Negev desert, having been displaced by the Israeli army in 1967.
In Gaza, the immense lack of electricity and inadequate sanitation infrastructure—due to Israel’s bombardments, blockade, and refusal to allow repairs—result in the discharge of 100–108 million litres of sewage into the sea every day. Current pollution levels are nearly four times higher than the international environmental health standard. Swimming in the sea is one of the few recreational activities available to people in Gaza.
Water-related diseases account for over one quarter of illnesses and are the primary cause of child morbidity in Gaza.
The debilitated wastewater treatment plants also present a constant threat of sewage flooding in areas adjacent to reservoirs and pumping stations. In May 2016, when a retention wall of a sewage lagoon in Gaza City’s treatment plant collapsed following a prolonged power cut, 15,000 cubic meters of raw sewage was released into a nearby farming area.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181015-khan-al-ahmar-flooded-with-waste-water-again/
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781466
UN Monthly Humanitarian Bulletin https://www.ochaopt.org/content/seawater-pollution-raises-concerns-waterborne-diseases-and-environmental-hazards-gaza-strip
Fact #118 (10/30/18)
In the occupied West Bank, Israel
• forbids the development of new Palestinian water infrastructure;
• destroys and confiscates existing infrastructure;
• limits Palestinians’ access to local water sources such as fresh water springs, drilled wells and rainwater cisterns;
• and deliberately contaminates Palestinian towns and land with sewage from the Illegal Israeli settlements.
About 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, 43% under the age of 18.
Nearly a quarter of West Bank Palestinians suffer from this lack of access to water and poor water quality. In Area C alone, 140,301 people live with no connection to a water network or must survive on an irregular water supply.
Residents of the Palestinian city of Nablus, for example, receive running water as infrequently as once every ten to fourteen days.
Nablus residents are forced to live on only 65 liters/person/day. In some neighborhoods, and for people in the refugee camps, the average consumption is 50 liters/person/day. (The WHO minimum is 100 liters/person/day.)
www.emro.who.int/images/stories/WHO_Right_to_health_Book_for_web.pdf?ua=1
http://www.btselem.org/water/20170913_acute_water_shortage_in_nablus
Fact #119 (11/13/18)
Last month, several Palestinian students, along with teachers and officials, were wounded as the Israeli army attacked their school south of Nablus with the intention of closing it down. Attacks and demolitions of schools in the West Bank are frequent. The students of al-Sawiya al-Lubban Mixed School were protesting the Israeli military occupation and the encroaching illegal Israeli settlements that have confiscated thousands of dunums of their Palestinian land and water resources.
Every day, at least 2,500 Palestinian students from 35 West Bank communities must cross through Israeli military checkpoints to reach their schools. Half of these students have reported army harassment and violence for merely attempting to get to their classes or back home. In addition, Jewish settlers set up their own checkpoints and engage in regular violence by throwing stones at children, or pushing them around.
In Area C, where this school is located, 140,300 Palestinians, including 50,000 children, live with no connection to a water network or must survive on an irregular water supply, often as infrequently as once a week.
Despite the Israeli occupation and its restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom, the Palestinian population remains one of the most educated in the Middle East. The literacy rate in Palestine (96.3%) is one of the highest in the Middle East and the illiteracy rate (3.7%) is one of the lowest in the world.
The Gaza Strip has an even higher literacy rate than the West Bank.
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781571
Fact #120 (11/27/18)
According to a new Rand Corporation study, bad water is a leading cause of child mortality in Gaza, and Gaza's children are facing a deadly health epidemic of unprecedented proportions.
Babies in Gaza are suffering from dehydration, vomiting, life-threatening diarrhea, and fever. In recent months doctors report sharp rises in gastroenteritis, kidney disease, anemia, pediatric cancer, marasmus (a disease of severe malnutrition), and "blue baby syndrome." Medical journals document increased infant mortality and an "alarming magnitude" of stunting, which can affect brain development.
Palestinian Ministry of Health figures show a "doubling" of diarrheal disease of epidemic levels, as well as spikes in salmonella and even typhoid fever caused by fecal contamination (110 million litres of raw and poorly treated sewage flows into the Mediterranean every day).
Medical experts blame Gaza's scarce and contaminated drinking water, due to Israel’s repeated bombing of water and sewage infrastructure, and Israel's economic siege of Gaza. 97% of Gaza's drinking-water wells are far below minimal standards for human consumption.
For example, in Gaza's densely packed Shati refugee camp, 87,000 refugees and their families—expelled from their towns and villages by Israel in 1948—live in half a square kilometre of cement-block structures along the Mediterranean. The aquifer water is undrinkable, so families spend up to half their income on the desalinated water trucked from Gaza's unregulated wells. Up to 70% of the desalinated water is prone to fecal contamination.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/gaza-drinking-water-spurs-blue-baby-syndrome-illnesses-181029110434881.html
Fact #121 (12/11/18)
Last month (November 2018),
• Thousands of Palestinian households in the north of the West Bank were without running water for two weeks because Israeli refused to fix a water pumping station that provides drinking water to four villages. The 20,000 residents were forced to buy expensive water from water tanks, which itself lacks health standards.
• Also in the north of the West Bank, Israel made plans to build a 7-km-long water pipeline between, and to exclusively serve, two illegal settlements. The pipeline and its construction will damage the existing Palestinian agricultural land and will severely harm the livelihoods and lives of the Palestinian farmers and their families.
• Israel demolished or seized 33 Palestinian-owned structures in East Jerusalem and Area C in the West Bank. Two of the structures were donor-funded water tanks provided as humanitarian assistance in response to a previous demolition by Israel.
Since 2016, the number of Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians and their property, including wells and water sources, increased by 175%.
As of December 2018, Israel has killed at at least 39 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces killed 38 children, and Israeli settlers killed one child. Of the 31 Palestinian minors killed in Gaza during the Return Protests, 21 were under the age of 16, and three were 11 years old.
So far this year, throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel has detained 908 Palestinian children under 18 years old. 270 of those children are still in detention in Israeli prisons. In detention, they are denied education, and some are denied family visits and medical attention. Children are usually removed in the middle of the night from their family homes, often severely beaten, and threatened in order to get them to sign false confession papers.
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=JK8Z4xa107687044938aJK8Z4x
https://www2.gulf-times.com/story/615618/Water-pipeline-for-illegal-settlements-in-West-Bank-will-harm-Palestinian-farmers
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/monthly-humanitarian-bulletin-october-2018
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180911-39-children-killed-by-israel-in-2018/
https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20181128_minors_killed_in_gaza_protests
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781852
Fact #122 (12/25/18)
(Note: The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 100 liters/person/day for basic sanitation, hygiene, and drinking. Israelis in the West Bank, including illegal settlers, have access to 300 liters/person/day. Because Israel controls their water, Palestinians in the West Bank must live on around 70 liters.)
In Bethlehem, residents were forced by Israel to go 40 days without running water in 2016. Many West Bank villages were allowed no running water for more than two weeks. Some had water for one hour twice a week. Bathing, drinking, cooking, and agriculture were affected. Factories had to shut down, gardens and plant nurseries were ruined, and animals died of thirst or were sold to farmers outside the affected areas.
In 2017, near the Bethlehem District village of Tuqu’, where Palestinian farmers live and raise livestock and crops, the Israeli military destroyed seven cisterns and other necessary water supply infrastructure. Israel does not allow the communities to connect to the water supply network. The farmers had dug the cisterns to collect rainwater with the financial aid of an international humanitarian organization. Israel's troops also demolished farming-related sheds, and would not allow the landowners to reach the demolition scene.
In 2017, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager during clashes in Tuqu’. He was shot with live ammunition in the chest at least three times and his body was detained for an unspecified time before being handed over to ambulance workers.
In 2018, in Tuqu’, the Israeli military shot and injured several Palestinian students, while dozens of others suffered from tear-gas inhalation. Israeli forces raided the local high school and fired tear-gas bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets at the students.
Also in 2018, about ten masked Israeli soldiers, accompanied by assault dogs, raided two family homes in Bethlehem. The soldiers forced open the doors to the homes and set the dogs on the adults and children.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/palestinian-villages-hours-water-week-161023105150024.html
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/palestinians-hit-by-local-drought-after-water-cuts-1.5398787
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/things-palestinians-cant-do_us_586554d4e4b0eb58648895bc
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781757
http://english.pnn.ps/2017/01/04/iof-demolish-10-water-wells-near-bethlehem/
https://mondoweiss.net/2017/01/israeli-palestinian-southern/
https://www.btselem.org/routine_founded_on_violence/20181002_soldiers_raid_homes_in_bethlehem_with_military_dog
Fact #123 (1/8/19)
In 1967, Israel’s then prime minister Levi Eshkol, planning the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, said: “If we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
Today all water access in Gaza is controlled by Israel. Israel's destruction of wells and water infrastructure has forced 97% of Gaza's two million residents (991,400 are children) to live without clean drinking water. More than 96% of the water is unfit for drinking.
Meanwhile, Israel is referred to as a “global leader in innovative and breakthrough technologies to manage scarce water resources,” including desalinization and waste-water recycling. Israel holds the world record for reusing domestic wastewater, 86% of which is treated and recycled for irrigation. It has a water surplus with an abundance of water for agriculture.
Yet, Gaza’s water-treatment and desalination plants at best operate minimally. In 2018, electricity outages ranging from 18 to 20 hours a day caused more than 40% of agricultural land to suffer from irregular irrigation. The exorbitant prices for pumped water forced many farmers to abandon farming altogether.
Israel's destruction and disrepair of Gaza's sanitation system has caused contaminated water and lethal overflowing sewage. Its blockade of Gaza restricts more than 70% of the materials critically needed to repair Gaza’s sewage-treatment facilities, so waste flows through neighborhoods and into the sea, which is now 73% polluted.
Israel's further tightening of the blockade of Gaza has stopped
—a major desalination plant that would have provided water to 200,000 people
—two water tanks and a water-booster system that would have provided water to 190,000 people
—facilities that would treat wastewater for hundreds of thousands of households and reduce the contamination load discharged to the sea.
Israel’s imposed restrictions are also stopping water-related projects funded by international donors, amounting to tens of millions of US dollars.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionisms-calm-destruction-palestine
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-study-water-desalination-advances-lends-to-dramatic-boost-for-farmers-1.5848554
http://nocamels.com/2017/05/desalination-israel-drought-water-shortage/
http://www.maannews.com
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/energy-crisis-takes-its-toll-palestinian-farmers-gaza
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620527/mb-gaza-israel-blockade-civilians-270818-en.pdf
Fact #124 (1/22/19)
As a result of Israel's bombardment of Gaza's water infrastructure and refusal to allow the destruction to be repaired, Palestinians in Gaza suffer from both a shortage of potable water (97% of drinking water is contaminated) and a lack of wastewater sanitation.
Poor water quality, poor access, and contamination account for more than 26% of all reported disease in Gaza and is a leading cause of child mortality (more than 12% of child deaths).
If a family can afford to buy water from a tanker truck, that water also has a high risk of chemical and bacterial contamination.
Children risk even greater exposure to bacterial contamination through water in schools. In Gaza, children under age 15 constitute 42.7% of the population.
Gaza schools have one toilet per 75 pupils and one sink for washing hands per 130. Most of this water is either recycled or from a polluted reservoir.
The ratio of students to one cleaning staff member is 445:1. In urban schools, one cleaning staff member serves 553 students. 37% of refugee camp-based schools are surrounded by solid waste and stagnant water.
Hospitals in Gaza are only cleaned when necessary in order to conserve water for life-saving treatment. Staff can only wash their hands when it’s essential and not regularly when going from one patient to another. Hospitals have reduced cleaning and sterilizing of medical facilities.
The 1,000+ Palestinians shot by Israeli forces during the anti-occupation protests now have infections that could leave them permanently crippled.
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium.MAGAZINE-polluted-water-a-leading-cause-of-gazan-child-mortality-says-rand-corp-study-1.6566812
The Public Health Impacts of Gaza's Water Crisis
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2515.html
https://www.presstv.com/detail/2018/11/29/581476/msf-gaza-palestine-israel-protestsDoctors
Fact #125 (2/5/19)
About 750,000 Israelis currently live in the ever-expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank, roughly 11% of the total Jewish Israeli population.
These illegal Israeli settlers use six times more water than do the 3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
Palestinian communities in the West Bank not connected to a water grid must live on just 10–20 liters/person/day—for all uses. Those connected to a water grid might receive as much as 73 litres/person/day. (The World Health Organization’s minimum standard is 100/litres/person/day.)
Expensive, poor-quality tanker water often costs one-fifth of a family's income.
Illegal Israeli settlements scattered throughout the West Bank consume as much as 700 litres/person/day—for domestic use (even more for swimming pools, lawns, etc.).
Developing new water access or repairing infrastructure that Israel destroyed is nearly impossible for West Bank Palestinians. Israel regularly denies permits, demolishes buildings and wells. And even constructing a small new water pipeline is hampered by the large water pipelines servicing the illegal settlements.
In 2018, in one day, for example, Israel destroyed—to expand or build new illegal settlements—three water systems, six homes, eight livelihood structures, and four solar-power systems. Eleven of those structures had been funded by the EU.
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2017_hrp_draft5_20_12_2017_v2.pdf
Fact #126 (2/19/19)
Since the nonviolent Great Return March began on March 30, 2018, the Israeli military has killed 240 Palestinians—including 40 children, three paramedics, two journalists, and seven persons with disabilities—and injured 23,000 people using live ammunition and tear gas bombs. And the military sprays the protesters with sewage water. U.S. taxpayers supply Israel with $3.8 billion in weapons every year.
Israel’s assaults and bombardments of Gaza’s wells and water infrastructure have forced 97% of Gaza's two million residents (991,400 are children) to live without clean drinking water. More than 98% of the water is unfit for drinking.
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 diarrhea among young children
• undernutrition, which contributes to diseases and impedes growth (7.1% of children are being stunted in height)
• anemia in 59.7% of schoolchildren
Families in Gaza 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.
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, epoxy paints for insulation.
Israel has also forbidden the entry of fuel and cooking gas, including emergency fuel supplied by the UN. Gaza’s severe and chronic lack of electricity makes fuel necessary to power generators in homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and water and sewage facilities. (As the result of Israel’s destruction of water treatment facilities and power facilities, the equivalent of 43 Olympic-size swimming pools of poorly treated sewage flows into the Mediterranean every day.)
www.democracynow.com
http://www.alhaq.org
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/gaza-protest-latest-updates-
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/10/refugee-palestinians-largest/
www.ewash.org/wash-in-opt/west-bank
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620527/mb-gaza-israel-blockade-civilians-270818-en.pdf
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778835
Fact #127 (3/5/19)
Israel confiscates 82% of Palestinian groundwater in the West Bank for its own use, including its illegal settlements.
Last month, in two weeks, Israel’s military destroyed three water connections in the occupied West Bank that had supplied tens of thousands of Palestinians with drinking water. Two pipelines were funded by international donors as humanitarian assistance. One had been laid just two months earlier.
The water connections supplied running water to 18,000 people in two villages in Nablus, 1,200 people in 13 herding communities near Hebron, and 320 people in a Bedouin community in the Jerusalem area—all of which suffer from severe water shortages, especially in summer.
Through its water company, Mekorot, Israel develops infrastructure to supply water to its illegal settlements and outposts and their agricultural projects (dairy farms, greenhouses, and vineyards). Although pipes run very close to Palestinian villages, they are not allowed to be connected.
Recently, when one Palestinian village connected neighboring communities to its water pipe, Israel confiscated the pipe and cut off the water supply.
Palestinians in the area are forced to rely on rain water stored in cisterns or buy expensive tanker-delivered water. Israel regularly demolishes the water cisterns, claiming they were built without permits, even though they date back centuries. (Israel forbids Palestinians from digging wells.)
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=2eCTFVa108617859372a2eCTFV
https://www.btselem.org/video/20190214_civil_administration_cuts_and_confiscates_water_pipe_servicing_12_communities_in_masafer_yatta#full
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e619ec59827e4b8476aa75/t/57cc57efc534a5dcc4306f34/1473009660299/EPRS_BRI%282016%29573916_EN.pdf
Fact #128 (3/18/19)
In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development called for an observance of the crucial role that water plays in our everyday lives. March 22 was declared World Water Day. This year’s theme is “Leaving No One Behind.”
Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, Israel forbids the reconstruction and repair of the Palestinian wells and water infrastructure that it demolished during its four devastating bombardments since 2008. 98% of the water is unfit for human use. 95% percent of the Gaza Strip’s two million residents are without clean drinking water.
Bad water is a leading cause of child mortality in the Gaza Strip, where children are facing a deadly health epidemic of unprecedented proportions.
Babies are suffering from dehydration, vomiting, life-threatening diarrhea, and fever. In recent months doctors report sharp rises in gastroenteritis, kidney disease, anemia, pediatric cancer, marasmus (a disease of severe malnutrition), and "blue baby syndrome." Medical journals document increased infant mortality and an "alarming magnitude" of stunting, which can affect brain development.
Diarrheal disease has doubled to epidemic levels and there are spikes in salmonella and typhoid fever caused by fecal contamination (110 million litres of raw and poorly treated sewage flows over land into the Mediterranean every day).
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/gaza-drinking-water-spurs-blue-baby-syndrome-illnesses-181029110434881.html
Fact #129 (4/2/19)
In 1967, when Israel completed its conquest of Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, it monopolized access to water, and forbade Palestinians to drill new wells or repair existing ones.
Levi Eshkol, then Israel’s prime minister, proposed a plan to expel the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under military occupation: “If we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
Palestinian agriculture declined. In 1994 it accounted for only 13% of the Palestinian GDP. Today it has been reduced to 3%.
In 1995, Israel took control over Area C, the 61% of West Bank land most suitable for agriculture. Israel and its illegal settlements took 80% of the water supply and allocated a mere 20% to Palestinians.
Half of the Palestinian wells have dried up. Now, only 6% of Palestinians' cultivated land in the West Bank is irrigated. (Israel forbids Palestinian herders and farmers to collect rainwater.)
“Agricultural terrorism” by Israel’s settlers and soldiers have uprooted 2.5 million fruit trees and 800,000 olive trees and have poisoned Palestinian farms with raw sewage.
Last month, Israelis from an illegal outpost in the West Bank dumped the carcasses of 10 sheep and lambs into a Palestinian farmer’s well. The farmer must now bring in a costly generator and pump to extract the contaminated water, and a water tank to rinse the well repeatedly until it’s cleansed and disinfected.
E. Hagopian, The Primacy of Water in the Zionist Project, Arab Studies Qly, Fall 2016
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/video-forced-drought-hits-jordan-valley-farmers-israel-steals-their-water
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionisms-calm-destruction-palestine
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer116/water-israels-occupation-strategy
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/farming-palestinian-outrage/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-a-palestinian-farmer-finds-dead-lambs-in-his-well-he-knows-who-s-to-blame-1.7022413
Fact #130 (4/16/19)
As Israel’s brutal blockade on Gaza enters its twelfth year, and less than 16% of items needed to repair and construct vital water infrastructure are allowed entry, Gaza’s economy has all but collapsed.
Today in Gaza, 95% of the population does not have access to clean water. (In 2000, the public water network provided over 98% of Gazans with safe drinking water. By 2014, after Israel’s bombardments, that figure had plunged to 10.5%.)
Most people in Gaza—over 68% of whom are food insecure, and more than 55% of whom are unemployed— must rely on expensive low-quality trucked water. While the average cost of water in the West is 0.7% of monthly wages, a third of the monthly wages of Gazans goes towards buying water, for those who can afford it. Others must rely on tainted water from the public taps that operate at most a few times a week.
The Occupied Palestinian Territory has the world’s highest unemployment rate. In Gaza, specifically, over half the workforce is unemployed. 70% of youth, who make up almost 30% of the population, and 78% of women are without work.
Poverty in Gaza is pervasive; 53% of the population survives on less than $4.60/day. 60% subsist on less than $3.60/day.
Although Gaza has rich farmland and 40 km of coastline, the Israeli blockade has severely restricted the residents’ access to domestic food sources available through agriculture and fishing.
Israel’s strict limitations have severely hampered the livelihood of Gaza’s fishermen, 95% of whom already live below the poverty line. Israel routinely shoots at and arrests fishermen, confiscates their vessels, and, in the last two years, has killed two fishermen and injured dozens.
The agricultural potential of Gaza has been deeply undermined by the blockade. 35% of farmland falls within an Israeli-enforced “buffer zone.” Farmers wishing to use their arable land are in constant threat of being shot at by Israeli military. Israel has damaged Palestinian farmland in Gaza by aerially spraying the land with herbicides. In January 2018, 550 acres of agricultural lands belonging to 212 farmers were affected, with an estimated loss of $1.3 million.
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
Fact #131 (4/30/19)
Recently, in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military attacked Palestinian schoolchildren with tear-gas bombs and sound grenades.
Late last year, Israel cut off all water supplies to the only school in the Palestinian West Bank village of Faroush Beit Dajan.
In the last four months of 2018, 111 Israeli attacks on students and schools in the West Bank affected more than 19,000 children and involved live ammunition, tear gas, and stun grenades.
Israel denies Palestinians permits to build schools, then demolishes schools built without permits.
In Area C (60% of the West Bank where the Israeli military has exclusive control over building), over a third of Palestinian communities do not have primary schools. An estimated 10,000 children attend school in tents, shacks, or other structures without heating or air-conditioning.
About 1,700 children walk five or more kilometers to school due to road closures, or lack of passable roads or transportation.
2,500 Palestinian students must cross Israeli military checkpoints daily. Half have reported army harassment and violence. Jewish settlers set up their own checkpoints and throw stones at children or push them around.
In Gaza, children are exposed to bacterial contamination through water in schools, which have one toilet per 75 pupils and one sink for washing hands per 130 pupils. 37% of refugee camp-based schools are surrounded by solid waste and stagnant water.
Yet the literacy rate in Palestine (96.3%) is one of the highest in the Middle East, and the illiteracy rate (3.7%) is one of the lowest in the world.
The Gaza Strip has an even higher literacy rate than the West Bank.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190415-israeli-soldier-attacks-palestinian-schoolchildren-in-hebron/
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2018/9/5/israeli-occupation-cuts-off-water-to-school-for-palestinian-children
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/25/israel-army-demolishing-west-bank-schools
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781571
The Public Health Impacts of Gaza's Water Crisis
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2515.html
Fact #132 (5/14/19)
Only 50.9% of Palestinian households in the West Bank have daily access to water. In Gaza, only 30% of households receive a daily water supply, which often stops altogether during wartime. This means that the Occupied Palestinian Territories has some of the lowest per capita water availability in the world.
Palestinians will suffer the effects of climate change more severely than Israelis. Israel is well positioned to deal with climate change: it is the 19th least vulnerable country and the 32nd most ready country.
Decreased rainfall is expected to be the most significant effect on Palestine/Israel over this century, accompanied by a significant rise in average temperatures. The combination will result in a higher demand for water.
Although international law says that Israel, as the occupying power, must meet the needs of the occupied population (this includes the guardianship of natural resources and prohibits the appropriation of property and the destruction and removal of agricultural areas, drinking water installations, and irrigation works), Israel—as it controls over 80% of water in the West Bank—forbids Palestinians from accessing water from rivers, streams, creeks, lakes, and reservoirs, whose discharge is expected to decrease significantly over the coming years.
Israel even denies permits to Palestinians wanting to capture runoff water in dams.
https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/climate-change-the-occupation-and-a-vulnerable-palestine/
Fact #133 (5/28/19)
In the first three months of 2019, Israel demolished 136 Palestinian structures in the West Bank—48 in East Jerusalem and 88 in Area C—a higher rate of demolitions than in the last two years.
7% of the demolished structures were water, sanitation, and hygiene related. 42% were residential. 38% were livelihood related.
In addition to the 218 people displaced (including 97 children), 25,000 people were impacted by the destruction of their water connections and wells.
• All 18,000 residents of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan were affected when Israel destroyed a 750 metre-long water pipeline that supplied water to the villages.
• 1,300 people in 12 other communities were affected when Israel damaged and confiscated two donor-funded water pipes.
• 320 people in the Palestinian Bedouin community of Wadi abu Hindi suffered the total destruction of their water pipes.
• Between July 2018 and March 2019, Israel shut down 12 water openings in Bardala, gravely affecting the farmers’ livelihoods. Then in March 2019, Israel closed a water opening that irrigated 1,150 dunums, affecting 47 farmers.
270,000 Palestinians in Area C are directly affected by Israel’s control of water- and sanitation-related infrastructure and networks. 95,000 people receive less than 50 litres/person/day (WHO recommends 100 litres/day). Over 83,000 people receive bad quality drinking water or must purchase expensive and unregulated water.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/demolitions-west-bank-undermine-access-water
Fact #134 (6/11/19)
The 18,000 residents of Beit Dajan and Beit Furik, West Bank, have one source of water, a shared well. In recent years, the capacity of pumping water from the well dropped by more than half. People must rely on high-priced tankered water—in summer, they wait for more than a month.
Although NGOs implemented a water network, after three months Israel destroyed the pipes.
The communities’ main source of income is livestock (over 25,000 sheep and goats), which consume about 75% of the water.
Palestinians in the northern Jordan Valley once cultivated about 15,000 dunums of land. Now the area has shrunk 50%—from water scarcity, limited access to water, and the increasing allocation of water in larger quantities to illegal Israeli settlers.
Illegal Israeli settlers, who use 8 times more water per person than do Palestinians, farm over 100,000 dunums of West Bank land. This serves Israel as a cheap and easy method for expanding and cementing its control in the West Bank.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/demolitions-west-bank-undermine-access-water
https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/map-en.html
Fact #135 (6/25/19)
Gaza’s fishing industry has collapsed.
Israel restricts the zone within which Gazans are permitted to fish. In the past three months, it expanded and contracted the limits at least 10 times, including declaring the sea completely off-limits.
Recently, Israel’s navy fired 15 bullets at one fisherman off Gaza's coast, shattering his eyes and leaving him blind.
Two years ago, the Israeli navy shot the same man at sea, wounding his leg, then arrested him, impounded his boat, and imprisoned him for 14 months accusing him of fishing outside the mile limit (which he denied). The other fisherman on the boat was shot and blinded in one eye, and arrested as well.
In the first five months of 2019, Israel impounded 4 fishing boats, wounded 8 fishermen, and arrested 21 other fishermen and abducted them to Israel.
In 2000, Gaza had 10,000 fishermen. Today only one-third of them are still working as such.
95% of fishermen live below the poverty line—on less than $4.60 a day for food, housing, clothing, health care, and education.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza prevents fishermen from repairing their boats.
The blockade also vastly contributes to the sewage-contamination of the Gaza sea’s limited fishing areas. Israel’s bombardments destroyed sewage treatment facilities and now Israel restricts more than 70% of the materials critically needed for repairs. Every day, 28,530,581 gallons of raw sewage are discharged into the Gaza sea, which is 73% polluted.
Israeli soldiers have forced fishermen at gunpoint to take off their clothes and swim to the navy vessels. A number of times, soldiers fired at the fishermen, then propelled wastewater at the boats.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-idf-gunfire-left-this-gaza-fisherman-blind-israel-won-t-let-him-get-treatment-1.7367129
http://waterjusticeinpalestine.org/weeklyfacts
Fact #136 (7/9/19)
On June 11, the Israeli military arrived in the Um Kbeish area in the West Bank. It declared the area a closed military zone and razed and destroyed two wells for collecting water, a fence surrounding the land, and about 240 olive trees.
One of the wells had belonged to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and was used to irrigate the olive trees. The other well belonged to a Palestinian resident and his siblings, who together own the nine dunums of land where the demolition took place. The family has documents proving ownership of the land and has planted olive trees since 2012, enduring financial hardships in maintaining its continued irrigation. In 2012, after they bought costly plastic water tanks to fill with tankered water, Israel issued a “removal notification” for the tanks.
In 2014, after the family constructed a water well, funded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Israel issued another “removal notification” under the pretext that the land constituted “State land.” The family filed a complaint and had a court hearing set for June 24. Ignoring this, Israel’s demolition took place on June 11.
Throughout the years, six Israeli settlements and outposts and an Israeli military camp have been built on land belonging to the West Bank village Sinjel, whose residents have documents proving their ownership. Also on June 11, the Israeli water company, Mekorot, razed the land to build a pipeline for the company. The pipeline would run from the Israeli military camp to a settlement, through an agricultural road, and 60 dunums of private land used to cultivate olives, almonds, and wheat.
The denial of access of Palestinian residents to their agricultural land leaves the lands uncultivated and therefore subject to confiscation by the Israeli authorities.
Since the election of Donald Trump, and his support of the illegal settlements, Israel has increased spending on roads, schools, and public buildings for its illegal settlements by 39%—to $459.8 million.
The strongest growth was in school construction (for illegal settler children), which jumped 68%, and road construction (not for Palestinians), which rose 54%.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid. For 2019, the President’s request for Israel would encompass approximately 61% of the total requested U.S. military funding worldwide. Annual grants to Israel represent approximately 19% of the overall Israeli defense budget. Israel’s defense expenditure as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product is one of the highest in the world.
http://www.alhaq.org/documentation/weekly-focuses/1426--qq-
https://www.apnews.com/bcaac495333d4e5394b3518a9dc8cd42
Fact #137 (7/23/19)
In addition to the more publicized lack of water and uncontrolled sewage and rubbish caused by Israel’s bombardments of Gaza’s water infrastructure and its refusal to allow repairs, Gaza is suffering from other environmental disasters linked to the Israeli occupation and aggression against Palestinians.
The Israeli army regularly sprays herbicide on Palestinian arable land, damaging Palestinian crops and contaminating the soil and water. The chemical it uses most often is glyphosate, which has been proven to cause cancer.
Israel’s repeated bombardments of the Strip have contributed to pollution. Its use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus cause immediate harm to civilian populations AND remain a health risk long after the bombardment has stopped.
Israel’s weapons have contaminated the environment in Gaza with heavy metals such as tungsten, mercury, cobalt, barium, and cadmium, which are known to cause cancer, birth defects, infertility, etc.
In the West Bank, Israel is polluting Palestinian land by using it as a dumping ground for 80% of the rubbish generated by Israeli settlements. Israeli industries and the Israeli army are also known to discard toxic waste on Palestinian land.
Over the past few years, Israel has systematically moved polluting factories to the West Bank by designating so-called “industrial zones” that are permitted to release their toxic byproducts into the environment without regard to the wellbeing of Palestinians living nearby.
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-environmental-crisis-is-of-its-own-making/
Fact #138 (8/6/19)
97% of Gaza’s 2 million residents (including 991,400 children)—whose water access is controlled by Israel—are without clean drinking water.
Israel confiscates 82% of Palestinian groundwater in the West Bank for its own use, including its illegal settlements. The illegal Israeli settlers use six times more water than do the 3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
In Area C in the West Bank, 270,000 Palestinians are directly affected by Israel’s control of water- and sanitation-related infrastructure and networks. 95,000 people receive less than 50 litres/day (WHO recommends 100 litres/day). Over 83,000 people receive bad quality drinking water or must purchase expensive and unregulated water.
In addition to using water as a weapon against Palestinians, in the first half of 2019—
The Israeli military in the Gaza Strip killed 54 Palestinians (including 12 children), injured 3,723 Palestinians (including 1,226 children), and arrested 88 Palestinians (including 22 children).
The Israeli military killed four children in the occupied West Bank.
Israel arrested 908 Palestinian minors.
The Israeli navy committed 207 violations against Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast (including detaining 28 fishermen and wounding 15), confiscated 11 fishing boats, and damaged nine boats.
Israel carried out 27 invasions in the Gaza Strip and razed tens of dunams of farmlands.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/demolitions-west-bank-undermine-access-water
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2017_hrp_draft5_20_12_2017_v2.pdf
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190731-israel-killed-54-palestinians-in-gaza-during-first-half-of-2019/
Fact #139 (8/20/19)
An estimated 80,000 Bedouin Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship live in villages that Israel refuses to recognize, which enables Israel to deny them access to water, basic state services, and infrastructure.
When Israel decides to use land around a Bedouin community for its military exercises, residents are forced to leave and sleep outside for days. They return to demolished dwellings and animal shelters, trampled crops and pastures, and churned-up earth where tanks passed through.
The first demolition of the Bedouin village al-Araqib, in the Negev region of southern Israel, was in June 2010. By June 2017, Israel had demolished al-Araqib 114 times (six times in 2017 alone).
This month, August 2019, Israel demolished al-Araqib for the 149th time.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/israel-razes-palestinian-bedouin-village-113th-time-170517075143632.html
https://electronicintifada.net/content/between-israels-bullets-and-bulldozers/24996
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=c44yqua111168557412ac44yqu
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777646
Fact #140 (9/3/19)
The Gaza Strip’s devastating water crisis and electricity shortage have forced its massively overcrowded hospitals to reduce the cleaning and sterilizing of medical equipment and facilities. Hospitals are cleaned when necessary. Staff can only wash their hands when it’s essential and not regularly when going from one patient to another.
Immense strain has been placed on the Gaza health sector as a result of thousands of casualties from Israel’s violent reaction to the ongoing Great March of Return peaceful demonstrations.
Between March 30, 2018, and March 31, 2019, Israel’s military killed 277 people, including 44 children, 9 persons with disabilities, 4 paramedics, and 2 journalists.
Israel’s military wounded over 28,000 peaceful demonstrators and observers, including 2,886 children, 231 paramedics, and 212 journalists.
Gunshot from Israeli soldiers accounted for 210 of the fatalities and for 6,872 injuries.
Some 172 people were permanently disabled as a result of their gunshot injuries, including 36 children. The major cause of permanent disability was amputation, with 121 amputations recorded during this period.
Last Friday—in one day—at the 72nd Great March of Return, Israel’s military injured 94 civilians: 25 children, 2 paramedics, and 2 journalists.
With Gaza hospitals overburdened and lacking supplies, electricity, and water, patients who need specialized health care must go to more advanced facilities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel. Israel has the power to approve or deny them permits.
Since the Great March of Return began, Israel received 550 applications (from patients Israel had wounded) to exit Gaza to access healthcare. Only 17% were approved, 26% were denied, and 56% were delayed.
https://pchrgaza.org/en/?p=12864
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/gaza-health-sector-still-struggling-cope-great-march-return-injuries
Fact #141 (9/17/19)
The Jordan Valley, 927-square-miles of the most fertile land in Palestine, comprises 30% of the West Bank.
After the 1967 war, Israel declared 60% of the Jordan Valley a military zone closed to Palestinians. There are now at least 18 illegal military outposts (7 of which were established after Trump became U.S. president).
The Jordan Valley holds some of the richest sources of water in the West Bank, including the Jordan River Basin and the Dead Sea, as well as numerous springs. But Palestinians are forbidden from digging wells or otherwise access this water.
If Palestinians had access to these lands, it would increase their agricultural yield by $1.6 billion annually.
The 12,000 illegal settlers who live there in 37 settlements have six times more water than the Palestinian residents have.
Palestinians have access to only 61 liters/person/day—or 20 liters for those not connected to the water grid—for leisure, livelihood, personal and household use, and agriculture. (WHO recommends 100 l/p/d.)
Israel continues to actively demolish Palestinian water pipes and wells, and further limit Palestinians’ access to water. Israel also does not allow Palestinians to visit or use the 26 nature preserves that it established on Palestinian land for the enjoyment of Israelis only.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/12/benjamin_netanyahu_israel_west_bank_annexation
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/palestinians-jordan-valley-lands-annexed-190912134446152.html
https://peacenow.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/JordanValleyEng.pdf
Fact #142 (10/1/19)
Israel’s brutal blockade on the Gaza Strip is in its twelfth year. Less than 16% of items needed to repair and construct vital water infrastructure are allowed entry. Gaza’s economy has all but collapsed.
Today 95% of the population of the Gaza Strip does not have access to clean water. (In 2000, the public water network provided over 98% of Gazans with safe drinking water. By 2014, after Israel’s bombardments, that figure had plunged to 10.5%.)
Most people in the Gaza Strip—over 68% of whom are food insecure, and more than 55% of whom are unemployed— must rely on expensive low-quality trucked water. While the average cost of water in the West is 0.7% of monthly wages, a third of the monthly wages of Gazans goes towards buying water, for those who can afford it. Others must rely on tainted water from the public taps that operate at most a few times a week.
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
Fact #143 (10/15/19)
Israel regularly cuts off water to Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. Families must buy trucked water that can cost 50% of their monthly expenditure.
Israel’s destruction and refusal to allow repairs of the water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip forces residents (if they can afford it) to spend 30% of their wages on trucked water.
For economic reasons alone, a successful olive harvest is essential.
Some of Palestine’s olive trees are over 4,000 years old. About 12 million trees grow on 48% of the agricultural land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (Israel has destroyed about 800,000 trees since 1967.)
The yearly Palestinian olive harvest and oil industry provide income for 80,000 to 100,000 families, employing many unskilled laborers and more than 15% of working women.
A successful harvest could be worth $160 million to $191 million. But Israel’s policies have been reducing the farmers’ income by over $12.3 million every year.
The olive harvest takes weeks, but Israeli only permits Palestinians to harvest their olives for about three days. Restricted year-round access impedes essential ploughing, pruning, fertilizing, and pest and weed management, as well as storage and export of the products.
Israel’s illlegal settlers attack and intimidate Palestinian farmers. Last month, settlers cut down 160 olive trees; damaged 100 trees; burned 70 trees; and uprooted 36 trees. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers shoot at farmers tending their trees.
https://www.arabamerica.com/harvest-time-attachment-palestine-parallels-attachment-olive-trees-land/
https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/date-and-olive-harvest-in-gaza-palestinians-hard-pressed-by-israeli-restrictions-in-pictures-1.920383#6
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-palestinians-report-hundreds-of-olive-trees-destroyed-in-west-bank-overnight-1.7490991
https://imemc.org/article/illegal-settlers-attack-palestinian-picking-their-olive-trees-near-nablus-injure-one/
https://imemc.org/article/illegal-colonialist-settlers-burn-dozens-of-olive-trees-near-nablus/
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/infestation-expected-affect-olive-harvest-west-bank
Fact #144 (11/5/19)
Israel is escalating its destruction of Palestinian property in the West Bank. This year so far, destruction of wells, water cisterns, and water networks is more than double that of previous years.
In one month (July 2019), for example, Israel executed five demolitions of wells, cisterns, and infrastructure that left Palestinian farming villages entirely without access to water. Israel ripped out kilometres of pipeline that supplied water to houses and farmland, confiscated emergency water tanks, and confiscated equipment used to install the pipes.
Earlier in the year, Israel removed a 20-km water network serving 12 Palestinian towns. Residents now must transport water in tanks on tractors along poor roads. Transported water costs Palestinians nearly four times more than Israeli settlers pay.
When hundreds of residents of one town recently protested Israel’s diversion of their water to a new illegal settlement (their land, where almost 3,000 Palestinians live, had also been stolen, and given to five settler families)—Israeli forces bombarded them with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and sound bombs.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/overview-september-2019
https://imemc.org/article/ism-water-series-theres-no-law-in-the-world-that-says-you-can-cut-water-from-humans/
08/30/19 | International Solidarity Movement | South Hebron Hills
https://imemc.org/article/ism-water-series-hail-of-tear-gas-on-peaceful-villagers-protesting-settler-theft-of-water-supply-in-kufur-malik/
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/occupied-palestinian-
Fact #145 (11/19/19)
Israel’s 2014 bombardment of the Gaza Strip destroyed and damaged more than 50% of the water infrastructure, critically affecting hospitals.
In two days this week, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip with more than 20 Israeli airstrikes and 10 artillery shellings—
• killing 34 people, including 8 children and a family of eight
• wounding 51 children and 60 adults.
Since March 2018 in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces—
• killed 328 Palestinians, including 46 children
• wounded 19,043 persons, including 4,901 children
Today, due to Israel forbidding repair of the water infrastructure, the massively overcrowded hospitals must reduce the cleaning and sterilizing of medical equipment and facilities. Hospitals are cleaned when necessary. Staff can only wash their hands when it’s essential, not regularly when going from one patient to another.
https://www.mezan.org/en/post/23605/82th%20Friday%20of%20Demonstrations%20in%20Gaza:%2090%20Wounded,%20including%2031%20Children,%20Two%20Women,%20One%20Paramedic
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2515.html
Fact #146 (12/3/19)
In the West Bank, Israel diverts water from Palestinian communities to its illegal settlements. Settlements consume as much as 700 litres/person/day of water—while Israel restricts some Palestinian communities to 10–20 l/p/d—far below the World Health Organization’s recommendation of a minimum 100 l/p/d.
The 650,000 Israelis living in settlements are allotted 6 times more water than the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Israel’s control of more than 80% of the water in the West Bank, along with its illegal settlements, Separation Wall, and military zones, have deprived the Palestinian economy of nearly 65% of the most fertile and best grazing land.
At most, 35% of irrigable Palestinian land is allowed to be irrigated, costing the Palestinian economy more than 100,000 jobs per year.
For sources, see previous facts.
Fact #147 (12/17/19)
While Israel is regarded as a world leader in water management, technology, and efficiency (it is ranked as the 32nd most resilient country in the world to tackle climate change)—Israel deliberately deprives Palestinians of those resources.
Despite living in the same geographical territory, Palestinians are already suffering the effects of climate change more severely than Israelis, especially in the Gaza Strip.
Drip-irrigation, water recycling, and the desalination of seawater are increasing the quality and quantity of water available to Israelis in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have some of the lowest per capita water availability in the world: only 50% of households in the West Bank and 30% in the Gaza Strip have daily access to water.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/israel-s-problematic-role-in-perpetuating-water-insecurity-for-palestine/?tmpl=component&print=1
Fact #148 (12/31/19)
In the Gaza Strip, high levels of contamination in the water sources, and in products and food produced with that water, have increased the number of water-transmitted diseases, such as diarrhea, Type-A hepatitis, typhoid, dysentery, and parasites. Doctors are on the verge of announcing an epidemic.
Contamination comes from the inability to treat sewage, which leaks into the aquifer and runs into the sea. Every day, 43 Olympic swimming pools worth of sewage spill into the Mediterranean off the coast of Gaza. (Fishermen suffer from spots and cysts on their legs from contact.)
Contamination is a result of years of Israel’s bombardments and blockade of repair materials. The blockade also prevents access to medications.
In one hospital in the Gaza Strip, more than 600 adults are currently receiving kidney dialysis as a result of contamination and minerals in the water. The annual increase of patients with kidney failure is about 13%.
More than 50 children with kidney failure receive dialysis each day, a number that doctors say doubles or triples yearly.
The shortage of potable water and inability to buy bottled water causes repeated urinary tract infections and dehydration.
Oxfam International: Patient Gaza: Water Under Siege
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3iIdX6Vf3s&feature=youtube
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/235000-people-across-gaza-strip-risk-flooding?fbclid=IwAR2b02WNLQ-4oHIHvWBImajqUXEnmkFXqE1_EYTOtxDDisBdK_FbbHMHt_0
https://www.juancole.com/2019/12/blockade-contaminated-illnesses.html
Fact #149 (1/14/20)
In the Gaza Strip this winter, about 235,000 people living in 39 low-lying areas are at risk of flooding from overflow of stormwater facilities and sewage pumping stations. They will experience an increase in waterborne diseases, and suffer property losses, disruption of livelihoods and services, and displacement.
Israel’s blockade prevents access to tools and equipment to rebuild the water and sanitation infrastructure that it had bombarded and destroyed. 97% of the water in the Gaza Strip is unfit for consumption.
This week, Israel opened one of the gates of its rainwater reservoirs east of Gaza, causing flooding of large swaths of Palestinian land, drowning hundreds of dunams of agricultural land and destroying barley, wheat, and other crops. These reservoirs prevent Palestinians from storing rainwater to irrigate their crops and fill underground wells.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/235000-people-across-gaza-strip-risk-flooding
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/27/on-the-road-to-gaza-the-freedom-flotilla-will-sail-again/
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200106-israel-opens-rainwater-stores-floods-gaza-farmland/#.XhaN6HqCjfE.facebook
Fact #150 (1/28/20)
The Israeli navy regularly shoots at and arrests Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast and destroys and confiscates their vessels.
In 2019,85% of fishermen suffered these violations. Israel opened fire 347 times and arrested and detained 35 fishermen, including three children. Nine of those arrested remain in Israeli prison. Israel wounded 21 people, confiscated 15 boats, destroyed 12 boats, and damaged 11 boats.
The Israeli authorities do not compensate fishermen for damages that occur during their seizure or while the boat is being held in Israel. Owners must forfeit their rights to compensation and release the Israeli military from responsibility for the damages.
Since 2000, the number of registered fishermen in Gaza has dropped from 10,000 to 2,000 actively fishing. The once prosperous fishing community (including 2,000 people working as vendors, equipment traders, and in boat maintenance) is now one of the poorest in Gaza. 95% of Gaza fishermen (andtheir 50,000 dependents) live below the poverty line—on less than $4.60 a day for food, housing, clothing, health care, and education.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200106-israel-arrested-35-wounded-21-fishermen-in-gaza-in-2019/
https://gisha.org/updates/10804\\
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
https://www.mezan.org/en/post/23589/Fact+Sheet%3A+The+Human+and+Financial+Losses+of+Fishing+Under+Occupation
Fact #151 (2/10/20)
This week, the Israeli military once again destroyed pipelines that supplied irrigation water to the West Bank village of Bardala. The village depends on agriculture, its main source of income.
Bardala was already suffering water shortage, due to Israel’s refusal to provide it with more than 100 cubic meters of water/hr. (The necessary minimum is 240.)
Before Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Bardala’s wells provided more than sufficient water.
In 1974, Israel and its water company, Mekorot, closed Bardala’s wells, demanded the village’s residents pay to receive water from their own springs, and built several deep wells on Bardala's lands for use by Israelis only.
In 2006, Mekorot further reduced Bardala’s water supply by 75%.
In 2017, Israel bulldozed Bardala’s rebuilt water outlets and destroyed 168 meters of pipelines to farms.
A month later, Israeli soldiers shot atthe village's peaceful Right to Water march of 500 people.
https://www.stopthewall.org/2017/05/08/bardala-marches-right-water
https://imemc.org/article/soldiers-destroy-water-pipes-in-jordan-valley/
Fact #152 (2/25/20)
Israel steals water in the West Bank from Palestinians and provides it to the settlers for free. This week, Israel’s military closed water holes in Al-Jiftlik village in the northern Jordan Valley.
The lives of these 4,700 Palestinian residents revolve around the periods that Israel does provide water, which differ weekly. For example, one week it was from 11 p.m. until dawn, then the following week from 4 p.m. until 11 p.m.
In 2017, the village’s average water supply was 62 liters/person/day, 38 liters fewer than the World Health Organization’s minimum. The water is used for human consumption, agriculture, livestock, and household chores. The Israeli settlers in the area receive nearly eight times more water.
Because Israel prevents the repair of water systems, the village has decaying water pipes, no formal sanitation system, and no ability to test water quality—exposing people to infections caused by poor hygiene habits, such as eating unwashed vegetables or improper hand-washing.
http://english.pnn.ps/2020/02/17/jordan-valley-iof-confiscate-barracks-order-eviction-of-15-facilities-close-water-holes/
https://www.dci-palestine.org/children_in_al_jiftlik_can_t_remember_when_they_had_enough_water
Fact #153 (3/10/20)
Public health institutions insist that washing one’s hands frequently is an essential first step in confronting the coronavirus epidemic. But in the Gaza Strip, 98% of the water is contaminated.
Israel’s bombardments of the Gaza Strip’s wells and water infrastructure have forced 97% of its two million residents to live without clean water for hygiene and consumption.
Hospitals have needed to reduce the cleaning and sterilizing of medical equipment and facilities. Staff can only wash their hands when it’s essential, not regularly when going from one patient to another.
The hospitals are massively overcrowdeddue to Israel’s assaults on nonviolent protesters at the Great March of Return. Measles (124 cases including two deaths in 2019) and other highly contagious infectious diseases are appearing in the Gaza Strip. Waterborne diseases are spreading at an alarming rate.
Israel’s blockade has completely depleted 44% of essential medications in the Gaza Strip, and 46% are at less than a one-month supply.
http://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/documents/hc-bulletin-opt-nov-dec-2019_final.pdf?ua=1
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/abbas-declares-state-emergency-coronavirus-spreads-west-bank
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/03/what-happens-if-coronavirus-reaches-the-gaza-strip/
Fact #154 (3/24/20)
In the last two weeks, even as Palestinians face the spread of the deadly coronavirus, as Palestinians are forced to survive on the minimal amount of water that Israel allows them, and overcrowded hospitals in the Gaza Strip do not have enough water for handwashing and sanitizing—
• Israel killed one young Palestinian and injured 200 others, including 20 children.
• Israel carried out 78 search and arrest operations across the West Bank, and arrested 110 Palestinians, including 16 children.
• Israel demolished or seized 14 Palestinian-owned structures, displacing and affecting 89 people, and bulldozed a section of a dirt road connecting five herding communities (700 people) to their main service center.
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=edfeiha115474287984aedfeih
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=nQnYk5a115463818701anQnYk5
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181003-90-of-gaza-resi…/
Fact #155 (4/7/20)
This week, Israel demolished a community clinic and emergency housing in a village in the Jordan Valley that were designated to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
This week, Israeli officials seized materials needed to form two tents for a field clinic, two for a mosque, and four for emergency housing for people evacuated from their homes—and confiscated a generator, sand, cement, and cinder blocks for the floor of the tents.
Israel’s military rampaged the headquarters of the emergency committee in a town north of occupied Jerusalem and assaulted the emergency workers.
Israeli forces assaulted volunteers working at Palestinian checkpoints to prevent the movement of citizens to stop the spread of coronavirus.
When Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem were closing due to the coronavirus, Israeli authorities demanded that they re-open. When Palestinian youths began to sterilize buildings in the city, Israeli authorities arrested them. Israel dismantled the barriers that were erected by residents of Hebron to examine Palestinian workers coming from Israel in an effort to prevent spread of the virus.
And this week, the Israeli military destroyed numerous wells in the occupied West Bank.
http://english.pnn.ps/2020/03/29/iof-demolish-clinic-for-combat-of-coronavirus-in-palestinian-village/
http://english.pnn.ps/2020/03/31/iof-raid-emergency-committees-in-hizma-assault-workers/
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=so7h9Da115647507030aso7h9D
Fact #156 (4/28/20)
Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians, making handwashing—an essential first step in confronting the coronavirus epidemic—nearly impossible.
In the West Bank, where Israel controls 80% of Palestinian groundwater, the 650,000 illegal settlers consume 6 times more water than do the 3.1 million Palestinians. Settlers consume as much as 700 liters of water/person/day while some Palestinian communities are restricted to 10–20 l/p/d.
The World Health Organization recommends a minimum 100 liters of water/person/day.
In the Gaza Strip, 97% of the 2 million residents (including 991,400 children) are without clean drinking water. In 2000, the public water network provided over 98% of Gazans with safe drinking water. Due to Israel’s bombardments, and its continual refusal to allow repair and reconstruction of water infrastructure, that figure has plunged. Today, 98% of the water in the Gaza Strip is contaminated.
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2017_hrp_draft5_20_12_2017_v2.pdf
Fact #157 (5/12/20)
Last year (2019), the Gaza Strip’s unemployment rate averaged 45%. More than 208,000 people were without work. Over 68% of the population suffered food insecurity.
Now, since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, another 130,000 workers have been made jobless.
As we all struggle to combat the spread of the coronavirus, access to clean water is more essential than ever. Yet 97% of the 2 million people in the Gaza Strip must live without clean water for hygiene and consumption. 98% of the water is contaminated.
The cause? Israel’s bombardments of the Gaza Strip’s wells and water infrastructure, and its refusal to allow repairs.
Families in the Gaza Strip who can afford it must rely on expensive low-quality trucked water.
But while the average cost of water in the West is 0.7% of monthly wages, and the UN states that affordable water should not cost more than 3% of household income—one third of the monthly wages of people in the Gaza Strip goes towards buying water.
Those who cannot afford to buy water must rely on contaminated water from the public taps that operate at most a few times a week.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/increase-gaza-s-unemployment-rate-2019
https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-grinds-halt/30116
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
Fact #158 (5/26/20)
In summer, the demand for water in the occupied West Bank increases by about 30%. Yet this week—despite the necessity of water for combatting the coronavirus—Israel drastically reduced the amount allotted to the West Bank districts of Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin, and Nablus.
In previous summers, Nablus residents received running water on average once every five to eight days and at times once every ten to fourteen days.
Israel restricts the average Palestinian to 87 litres of water per day, far less than the WHO minimum of 100. Nablus residents must live on only 65 l/p/d. In some neighborhoods, and for people in the refugee camps, average consumption has been as low as 50 l/p/d.
Israel continues to destroy and confiscate existing water infrastructure, and limits Palestinian access to their local water sources such as fresh water springs, drilled wells, and rainwater cisterns.
This week, the Israeli army demolished an artesian water well and confiscated 25 water pipes, each 8 meters long, in the northern Jordan Valley.
In the same area, illegal Israeli settlers leveled Palestinians lands, connected a 4 km underground water line for their own use, and placed a water tank on Palestinians’ land.
Last year, in two weeks alone, Israel’s military destroyed water connections in the West Bank that had supplied running water to 18,000 people in two villages in Nablus.
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-14-20-may-2020/
http://www.btselem.org/water/20170913_acute_water_shortage_in_nablus
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/covid-19-emergency-situation-report-9
http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=8xs1L4a117173167089a8xs1L4
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200321-average-palestinian-consumes-87-litres-of-water-per-day/
Fact #159 (6/9/20)
Residents of Kafr Qaddum, like other Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, do not have consistent access to running water because Israel controls their water supply. They must stock up on water during supply hours, and store their reserves in rooftop water tanks that can hold between 500–1,000 litres of water for use during the many hours when there is no running water.
Since the beginning of April, Israel has shot and damaged the water tanks on residents’ homes as retaliation for their weekly protests against Israel’s land confiscations and its closure of the village’s exit routes. This new tactic of suppression is causing hundreds of dollars of damage and significant loss of water resources for the community.
Soldiers damaged 24 water tanks, in some cases shooting the same water tanks multiple times over the month. Families have lost more than 450 litres of water in one day.
Residents try to temporarily patch the holes with screws and glue, but eventually must buy new tanks, which are costly, especially during the COVID-19 crisis when many people face new financial hardships in addition to Israel’s restrictions on movement and employment.
Since the villagers began their weekly marches in 2011, they have been met with escalating forms of violence by Israeli forces. Between 2011 and 2014, two residents were disabled for life. One man is unable to speak since he was shot in the mouth with a tear gas canister. Another man was blinded by a rubber bullet shot in his eyes. In 2014, a man suffocated and died from tear gas inhalation.
After 2014, Israeli soldiers began using .22 caliber bullets. Between 2014 and 2016 they injured more than 85 people, many of them children. In July 2019, the soldiers shot a 10-year-old boy in the head, causing severe brain damage.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200529-normalising-israeli-violence-during-the-pandemic/
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/07/residents-israeli-snipers/
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/05/despite-pandemic-israeli-army-shoots-at-water-tanks-in-palestinian-village/
https://www.btselem.org/firearms/20200527_soldiers_shoot_holes_in_water_tanks_at_kafr_qadum
Fact #160 (6/23/20)
Soon after the 1967 war, Israeli leaders discussed how to expel the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under its military occupation. Levi Eshkol, then Israel’s prime minister, proposed: “If we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
The Jordan Valley has 927 square miles of the most fertile land in Palestine. Israel’s illegal settlements and military closures restrict Palestinians from 91% of the land. At least 18 illegal military outposts (7 of which were established after Trump became U.S. president) close off 60% of the area.
Palestinians in the northern Jordan Valley once cultivated about 15,000 dunums of land. Now the area has shrunk 50% as a result of Israel forbidding access to water and increasing its allocation of water in larger quantities to the illegal settlements. Illegal Israeli settlers consumes 8 times more water than Palestinians.
The Jordan Valley’s rich water sources include the Jordan River Basin, the Dead Sea, and numerous springs. If Palestinians had access to their land and water, their agricultural yield would increase by $1.6 billion annually.
Israel regularly cuts off the water supply to Palestinian towns and villages, demolishes Palestinian water pipes and wells, and forbids people from digging new wells, repairing old ones—or even setting up cisterns to collect rainwater.
Trucked-in water often costs 50% of a Palestinian family’s monthly expenditure.
Israel’s systematic demolitions of Palestinian homes, denial of building permits (including toilets and structures for privacy)—and destruction of water pipelines and water tanks—make it impossible to maintain a sanitary environment, particularly for the everyday personal hygiene needs of women and girls, and, now, for the necessity of frequent handwashing as a measure against COVID-19.
For sources, see facts 42, 83, 92, 114, 134, 141 here on the Alliance’s website.
Fact #161 (7/7/20)
This week, when the Israeli navy attacked a Palestinian fishing boat off the coast of the Gaza Strip, the soldiers abducted four of the fishermen on board. The boat was within the permitted fishing zone.
The Israeli navy regularly shoots at and arrests Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast and destroys and confiscates their vessels.
In 2019, 85% of fishermen suffered these violations. Israel opened fire 347 times and arrested and detained 35 fishermen, including three children. Nine of those arrested remain in Israeli prison. Israel wounded 21 people, confiscated 15 boats, destroyed 12 boats, and damaged 11 boats.
The Israeli authorities do not compensate fishermen for damages that occur during their seizure or while the boat is being held in Israel. Owners must forfeit their rights to compensation and release the Israeli military from responsibility for the damages.
Since 2000, the number of registered fishermen in Gaza has dropped from 10,000 to 2,000 actively fishing. The once prosperous fishing community (including 2,000 people working as vendors, equipment traders, and in boat maintenance) is now one of the poorest in Gaza. 95% of Gaza fishermen (and their 50,000 dependents) live below the poverty line—on less than $4.60 a day for food, housing, clothing, health care, and education.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200106-israel-arrested-35-wounded-21-fishermen-in-gaza-in-2019/
https://gisha.org/updates/10804\\
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
https://www.mezan.org/en/post/23589/Fact+Sheet%3A+The+Human+and+Financial+Losses+of+Fishing+Under+Occupation
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-naval-forces-abduct-four-gaza-fishermen-off-the-coast-of-rafah
Fact #162 (7/21/20)
Even before Covid-19 and its ongoing and devastating toll, the everyday health conditions in the Gaza Strip were assaulted by Israel.
Israel’s 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.
Fact #163 (8/4/20)
Israel has been escalating its tactic of removing Palestinians from their land using the deprivation of water as a weapon. Here are three examples, among hundreds, that occurred this week in the occupied West Bank:
• Israeli soldiers invaded the Palestinian village of Farasin (population 200) and handed out 36 immediate demolition orders for all structures and water wells. The village has a 200-year old well and several ancient buildings.
• Israeli colonists invaded Khirbat Samra Bedouin community and stole three water tanks each with the capacity of 1.5 cubic meters. They also stole sheds, four tents, kitchenware, and five tons of wheat and animal feed, then fled the area.
• Israeli bulldozers destroyed Palestinian-owned farmlands in Bruqin to extend sewage lines for an illegal Israeli settlement.
Since the beginning of this year, Israeli soldiers injured 1070 Palestinians, mainly during nonviolent protests against the illegal annexation of their lands, home demolitions, and the isolation of entire villages and towns. Israeli soldiers killed 27 Palestinians, including seven children. (Seventeen were killed in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, and ten in the Gaza Strip.)
In those same six months, Israel abducted about 2330 Palestinians in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip. Among those abducted are 304 children.
https://imemc.org/article/israel-delivers-demolition-orders-for-36-palestinian-owned-structures-near-jenin/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-colonists-steal-palestinian-water-tanks-and-tents-in-northern-plains/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-bulldozers-raze-palestinian-owned-farmlands-near-salfit/
Fact #164 (8/18/20)
This week Israel stopped the entry of fuel into the Gaza Strip. Power outages of 16–20 hours per day will further deteriorate the area’s fragile health system, limited sanitation services, and severe lack of access to drinking water.
Chronic electricity shortages have meant that pumps don’t work, causing waste to flow through neighborhoods and large sewage lakes to form. Two years ago a sewage lake overflowed, drowning five people in a nearby village.
Even when the pumps are working, the equivalent of 43 Olympic-size swimming pools of poorly treated sewage is dumped into the Mediterranean every day. The sea is more than 70% polluted.
Because Israel destroyed and has refused to repair the Gaza Strip’s sanitation infrastructure, water contamination is responsible for at least 26% of all disease.
Israel’s ongoing blockade restricts nearly all the materials critically needed to repair Gaza’s sewage-treatment facilities.
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-iof-tightens-gaza-strip-closure-fuel-entry-suspended-and-fishing-area-reduced/
Fact #165 (9/1/20)
Israel’s use of water as a weapon against Palestinians makes handwashing—essential to confronting the escalating coronavirus pandemic—nearly impossible.
Israel controls 80% of Palestinian groundwater In the West Bank, intentionally restricting many Palestinian communities to 10–20 liters of water/person/day. The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 100 liters of water/person/day.
Meanwhile, Israel’s 650,000 illegal settlers consume 6 times more water than do the 3.1 million Palestinians. Settlers consume as much as 700 liters of water/person/day.
In the Gaza Strip, 98% of the water is contaminated. 97% of the 2 million residents (including 991,400 children) are without clean drinking water due to Israel’s bombardments and its continual refusal to allow repair and reconstruction of water infrastructure.
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_40_73.pdf
https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2017_hrp_draft5_20_12_2017_v2.pdf
Fact #166 (9/8/20)
Israel completely closed off the Mediterranean Sea to Gaza’s fisherman from August 16 to September 1. Twenty years ago there were 10,000 registered fisherman in Gaza and now there are only 3,700, 95 % of whom live below the poverty line.
https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2020/09/01/dying-to-fish-how-israeli-piracy-destroyed-gazas-once-thriving-fishing-industry/
Fact #167 (9/22/20)
Gaza’s residents confined to their homes to stop the spread of Covid-19 are struggling to obtain water for drinking, cleaning, and personal hygiene. Power cuts often bar them from filling rooftop tanks when water is available from the municipality. In the Jabalya refugee camp, after one person tested positive for the virus, 24 family members were told to “self-isolate,” and prevented by police from leaving their home in search of water.
http://mezan.org/en/uploads/files/1599648780765.pdf
Fact #168 (10/6/20)
Last week, the Israeli army issued a military order confiscating 1,639 square meters of land owned by a Palestinian farmer in the Jordan Valley in order to expand a water pumping station supplying Israeli settlements and military camps with water from an artesian well.
https://www.pchrgaza.org/en/?p=15155
Fact #169 (10/20/20)
On nearly a daily basis during the Oct. 5–19 period, Israeli gunboats have fired on Palestinian fishing boats within 3 or 4 nautical miles from Gaza’s shore, damaging vessels and causing panic. After Palestinians were promised a fishing zone of up to 20 nautical miles (37 km) by the Oslo Accords, the Israeli navy issued arbitrary restrictions of 6–9 nautical miles when it imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2007. There used to be 10,000 registered fishermen in Gaza. There are now fewer than 4,000.
https://www.pchrgaza.org/en/?p=15209
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/dying-to-fish-how-israeli-piracy-destroyed-gazas-once-thriving-fishing-industry/
Fact #170 (11/3/20)
On Oct. 26, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that the Israeli army had approved plans to seize land just north of the West Bank village of Battir. A few miles from Bethlehem, Battir is known for its Roman-era terraces, ancient complex of irrigation channels fed by groundwater and springs, and traditional equitable water distribution system benefiting the village’s farming families. When, in 2014, its landscape and irrigation system were being threatened by an extension of Israel’s separation Wall, Battir got a reprieve by being listed as both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a World Heritage in Danger site. It is now being threatened anew by escalating settlement activities. In 2019, settlers established the illegal outpost of Neve Ori two kilometers from the village. Since then, settlers have repeatedly encroached on Battir’s land, which they claim belongs to them, and farmers and other residents are being attacked by the army as caravans are set in place and settlement roads are paved.
https://www.pchrgaza.org/en/?p=15243
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1492
https://portside.org/2020-08-01/i-want-battir-go-hell-israeli-settlers-invade-palestinian-world-heritage-site
Fact #171 (11/17/20)
During the current olive harvest season, as in previous years, many Palestinian farmers have had to contend with untreated sewage from illegal settlements being dumped on their land, turning it into a “wastewater swamp.” The village of Deir Ballut in the Salfit region has recently had its fields drowned in sewage from three nearby illegal settlements, and there are similar stories around the West Bank. Untreated sewage creates “toxic wastelands” and causes the trees to die.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-west-bank-settlements-sewage-dump
Fact #172 (12/1/20)
Depriving Palestinians of water plays an essential role in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of parts of the 62% of the West Bank classified as Area C by the Oslo Accords. Here is the tally of water deprivation on a single day, November 25. Israeli forces confiscated a one-mile water pipeline connecting Khirbat Safi and Khirbat al Majaz in the southern West Bank. At least 100 Khirbat Safi residents depended on the pipeline for their water. The army also damaged a water tank in Khirbat Jabna and part of its irrigation network and destroyed buildings that included 2 health facilities and 4 water tanks in Fasayil village north of Jericho.
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-november-19-25-2020/
Fact #173 (12/15/20)
On Dec. 11, a large military force violently dispersed residents of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, while they were planting olive tree saplings on their land in hopes of preventing a nearby settler outpost from seizing more of it. The settlers had extended water pipelines and bulldozed a road across village land to their outpost. Meanwhile, Beit Dajan and adjacent Furush Beit Dajan have been deprived of water on which their citrus and date trees depended. The water pipeline that supplied Furush Beit Dajan was destroyed by Israeli forces in May 2019, and shallow village wells have been depleted by deep wells dug to enable the nearby settlements of Hamra and Mehora to irrigate hundreds of acres of date palms. Twenty years ago, Beit Dajan dug a new well two miles from the village, only to be blocked from accessing it by a settlement road.
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/122405
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/98296
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2002-09-21-0209200774-story.html
Fact #174 (12/29/20)
On Dec. 18, the water pipelines sustaining Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya near Nablus were destroyed by settlers from the Ma’ale Levona settlement that had been established on village land. The village, which dates back to the Ottoman era, had once been famous for its water spring.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/jewish-settlers-destroy-water-pipelines-trees-near-nablus/
Fact #175 (1/12/21)
On Jan. 1, after the area underwent drone surveillance, Israeli soldiers tasked to deal with “illegal construction” descended on the village of Khirbet al Rakiz in the South Hebron Hills. In an episode captured on video they seized a small generator found in a cave where Ashraf Amour lived with his family. While attempting to stop the confiscation of the generator, a neighbor, 24-year-old Harun Abu Aram, was shot in the neck from a few feet away, and left paralyzed. The army then fired on the car taking him to hospital and punctured its tire. Before leaving the village, soldiers issued the Amour family with demolition orders in connection with the kitchen water cistern where they store rainwater and the water they buy from tanker trucks. Last November, the house that Harun Abu Aram’s family had finished two weeks earlier was destroyed by the army, forcing them to live in a leaky cave. According to Israeli journalist Amira Hass, “the forces sent in to carry out the demolitions also dismantled the water connection that had been installed by the village’s council,” forcing families to buy water from tankers at a cost of $124 a month “which is well beyond their means.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-witness-troops-shot-palestinian-when-he-tried-to-stop-them-from-seizing-a-generator-1.9417620
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-village-where-palestinians-are-kept-entirely-powerless-1.9423349
Fact #176 (1/26/21)
On Jan. 21, without prior notice, Israeli forces opened water dams and pumped large quantities of rainwater onto Palestinian farmland along the eastern side of the Gaza Strip, submerging vegetables and causing thousands of dollars of damage. A year ago, on January 13, 2020, Israel destroyed crops worth $500,000 and drowned chickens and beehives when they flooded four square kilometers of Gaza’s farmland. 70% of Gaza’s residents are food insecure.
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/122951
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/1/13/israel-destroys-half-a-million-dollars-worth-of-gaza-crops
Fact #177 (2/8/21)
According to Al Jazeera, Michael Mirilashvili, an Israeli-Russian billionaire and CEO of a firm called Watergen, was so shocked by pictures of children in Gaza filling plastic containers with water purchased from street vendors that he made a donation of three Watergen machines and managed to get them through the Israeli blockade into Gaza. The machines capture humidity from the air and, depending on their size, can transform it into between 800 and 6,000 liters of clean drinking water a day, but less in Gaza because of its erratic power supply. There are 1,000 liters in a cubic meter. With 97% of its sole aquifer contaminated, the Gaza Strip needs to obtain 200 million cubic meters of water annually from other sources. Gaza’s three desalination plants produce only 13 million cubic meters per year and are frequently shut down due to chronic electricity shortages.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/30/high-technology-assists-gazas-contaminated-water-emergency
Fact #178 (2/23/21)
On Feb. 8, the Israeli army destroyed three water wells in al-Mughayyir northeast of Ramallah. The family of Fadel Ibrahim Hamed Abu ‘Alia had depended on the wells for all their daily needs and for supplying water to their sheep. The previous year settlers had poisoned their sheep, killing 16 of them, and built a road through the family’s land to their outpost, Adi Ad. On Feb. 10, the army moved into the central Jordan Valley north of Jericho and destroyed three rainwater collection pools used by Palestinians to irrigate their crops. On the same day soldiers demolished a water pool used for irrigation near Marj Na’jah village, north of Jericho.
https://www.pchrgaza.org/en/weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-04-10-january-2021/
Fact #179 (3/9/21)
The Israeli army and settlers are dividing the work of depriving Palestinians of water, as two episodes on a single day demonstrate. On March 1, as Jewish settlers vandalized the electronic panel controlling the water supply to Asira al-Qibliya near Nablus, the army confiscated a water tank in the northern Jordan Valley village of Fasa’il a-Tahta. The tank belonged to families whose homes had been destroyed some months previously.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/jewish-settlers-vandalize-water-control-panel-in-west-bank/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-forces-flatten-homes-in-wildcat-palestinian-village-leaving-11-homeless/
Fact #180 (3/23/21)
On March 21, the Palestinian Water Authority and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a report showing that only 4% of households in the Gaza Strip have access to safe water for domestic use. 97% of the water from Gaza’s sole aquifer is not drinkable and the per capita daily allocation of water suitable for domestic use is only 22.4 liters per day, well below the 100 liters per day recommended by the World Health Organization.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/pcbs-only-4-of-households-in-gaza-have-access-to-safe-water/
Fact #181 (4/6/21)
After 20 years of planning and repeated setbacks, a German-funded wastewater treatment plant built in Bureij in the Gaza Strip will be fully operational this month. It will treat wastewater from 11 communities that are home to 1 million people. A biogas plant and solar facility constructed on the site will enable it to avoid the frequent shutdowns caused by Gaza’s erratic electricity supply.
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/123803?fbclid=IwAR2BP_oQngV05tnHqcYvitchDy7wVejLX4yP1x5o5ogdudlYnUficl-KmCg
Fact #182 (4/20/21)
Having deployed water as a weapon against Palestinians, Israel has recently been using it against the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, one of the driest countries in the world. A complicated water sharing arrangement concerning supplies taken by Israel from the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers as well as groundwater had been part of the October 1994 peace agreement between the two countries. In addition to some 55 million cubic meters of water annually that Israel undertakes to provide to Jordan free of charge each year, the agreement enables Jordan to purchase additional water in times of excess drought. But once relations between the countries deteriorated after the Kingdom opposed Netanyahu’s Jordan Valley annexation plans, Israel held back on sending additional water supplies that Jordan requested. It reportedly took Secretary of State Blinken’s early April phone call with the Israeli Foreign Minister to get Israel to eventually release 8 million cubic meters at $.40 per cubic meter which Jordan had asked for weeks previously.
http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/peacetreaty.html
https://www.barrons.com/news/israel-sends-jordan-extra-water-thanks-to-us-pressure-01618419620?tesla=y
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210327-netanyahu-rejects-ammans-request-to-increase-water-supplies-to-jordan/
Fact #183 (5/4/21)
On April 22, following Ramadan prayers, an armored vehicle sprayed Palestinians gathered near the Old City’s barricaded Damascus Gate with foul-spelling “skunk water to disperse them. An invention of the Israeli firm Odortec, skunk water was first used against demonstrators in the West Bank in 2008. Since then it has been frequently used against Palestinians and has been sold to several US police departments, including the St. Louis Metropolitan police after the Ferguson uprising. Called a “whiff from hell” by The Economist, it smells like a “mixture of excrement, noxious gas and a decomposing donkey.” Its nausea-inducing odor can last for days. “How unbearable it must be,” an Israeli eye-witness wrote, “to break the fast on Ramadan night after being soaked by the skunk’s putrid sewage.”
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/more-than-100-hurt-in-jerusalem-as-palestinians-clash-with-jewish-supremacists/
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34227609
https://www.972mag.com/jewish-supremacy-violence-jerusalem/
Fact #184 (5/18/21)
Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip is a humanitarian catastrophe. As well as erasing entire families, destroying hospitals and clinics and the roads accessing them, and the only lab for conducting tests at a time of surging Covid-19, Israel’s assault has badly damaged the water and sanitation infrastructure and the electricity system, leaving Gazans with only 2–3 hours of electricity a day. The New York Times reported on May 18 that the streets of Gaza City were flowing with wastewater due to the destruction of the sewage system. Nearly a million people (about half the population) are without water due to the partial shut down of a desalination plant and the smashing of water pipes, with the situation growing more dire with each passing day.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-wiping-entire-palestinian-families-hamas-1.9820005https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/world/middleeast/gaza-humanitarian-disaster.html
Fact #185 (6/1/21)
Israel’s most recent assault and bombardment has destroyed the Gaza Strip’s sewage systems, forcing municipalities to send untreated wastewater into the streets, over the open fields, and into the sea—further threatening the lives and health of citizens—infiltrating and polluting the coastal aquifer as well as Gaza’s seashore.
Israel’s bombing has incapacitated a critical desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people, and water pipes serving nearly a million people who now do not have access to clean piped water.
It would cost about $100m to rebuild the damage to industry, power, and agriculture. Gaza continutes to be subjected to Israel’s devastating 14-year blockade. Now, for more than three weeks, Israeli has shut down the Karm Abu Salem border crossing, the only gate though which Israel allows the entry of basic commodities into the Strip, including badly needed fuel and gas.
The lack of fuel needed for the only power plant in the Gaza Strip has shortened the average daily power supply to each household to no more than four hours.
http://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/124815
https://www.ochaopt.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/world/middleeast/gaza-humanitarian-disaster.html
Fact #186 (6/15/21)
Soon after the 1967 war, Israeli leaders discussed how to expel the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under its military occupation. Levi Eshkol, then Israel’s prime minister, proposed: “If we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice.”
Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has erased entire families, and destroyed hospitals, clinics (and the only lab for conducting Covid-19 tests), and the roads accessing them. It has also destroyed the water and sanitation infrastructure and the electricity system, leaving Gazans with only 2 to 3 hours of electricity a day.
The Gaza Strip’s 365 square kilometers is home to two million Palestinians. Its density is 5,479 people per square kilometer.
In 1947, about 80,000 Palestinians were living in the towns and villages that became the Gaza Strip. Their aquifer at that time produced 60 million cubic meters of water a year, sufficient to serve the residents and later to serve the additional 200,000 Palestinians who were expelled to Gaza in 1948 and became refugees. Today, after Israel’s bombardments, more than 95% of the water in Gaza is not potable.
More than 800,000 Gazans, 43% of the population, are under 14 years old. These children have been traumatized by four wars and have never had a drink of water from their faucets.
Source: Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine: https://www.waterjusticeinpalestine.org
Fact #187 (6/29/21)
Israel’s recent bombing of the Gaza Strip damaged or destroyed 13 wells, three desalination plants, and 250,000 meters of water pipes.
A single strike to just one well near Gaza City cut off water supply to 120,000 people.
Early estimates say the damage to Gaza City alone exceeds $20 million: water and sewer networks, wells, sewage pumps, municipal facilities and vehicles, roads and sidewalks, electricity networks, and administrative buildings.
Additional damage to water infrastructure across the Gaza Strip is discovered daily. Even small movements of components in facilities that were shaken or broken by shock waves from Israel’s bombs can cause leakage.
Israel’s 14-year blockade forbids entry of 5,000 different items urgently need to repair water systems and networks. It has also blocked the entry of fuel for Gaza’s power plant, impeding the delivery of running water.
The blockade has banned more than 70% of 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, epoxy paints for insulation.
Before Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, 97% of the 2 million people in the Gaza Strip were already living without clean water for hygiene and consumption, and 98% of the water was already contaminated—both crises due to previous bombardments.
COVID-19 is spreading at an alarming rate, especially since the recent Israeli aggression, which displaced tens of thousands of people to crowded spaces. (Last month, Israel demolished Gaza’s only COVID-19 testing center.) People cannot wash their hands.
http://mezan.org/en/uploads/files/16239386061233.pdf
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-this-is-a-catastrophe-one-out-of-five-gazans-has-no-access-to-running-water-1.9930295?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=daily-brief&utm_content=deffc42da4
https://al-shabaka.org/memos/climate-change-pandemic-and-siege-in-gaza-a-nexus-of-disaster/
Fact #188 (7/13/21)
Children.
Of the two million people in the Gaza Strip, nearly 50% (991,400) are children under 15 years old.
Like the adults, the children cannot access water due to the damage to wells, groundwater, desalination plants, and sewage treatment plants as a result of the Israel’s military assaults and blockade.
Even before Israel’s latest bombings, the Occupation-caused deterioration of the sanitation system, prevalence of contaminated water and sewage, and lack of clean drinking water led to a 41.5% rate of diarrhea among young children, under- and malnutrition, anemia in 59.7% of schoolchildren, gastroenteritis, kidney disease, anemia, pediatric cancer, "blue baby” syndrome, and dehydration and fever.
Today, 91% of children in the Gaza Strip additionally suffer from PTSD after the Israeli attack. Prior to the recent military assault, about 33% of children needed support as a result of trauma caused by Israeli forces.
As a result of Israel’s latest bombings—
• one or both parents of 241 children died.
• 5,400 children’s homes were completely destroyed or severely damaged.
• 42,000 children’s homes were partially damaged.
• 72,000 children were internally displaced to UNRWA schools or relatives’ homes during the Israeli attack. More than 4,000 children remain displaced today.
66 children were killed in the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 11 days. At least 470 children were injured, including injuries that will result in permanent or long-term disabilities.
Note: Despite the Israeli occupation and its restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom, the literacy rate in Palestine (97.2%) is one of the highest in the Middle East, and the illiteracy rate is one of the lowest in the world. The Gaza Strip has a higher literacy rate than the West Bank.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/gaza-drinking-water-spurs-blue-baby-syndrome-illnesses-181029110434881.html
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4497
https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=3805
Fact #189 (7/27/21)
Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians. One way is force the relocation of Palestinians from their homes in order to maximize the land available for illegal settlements.
Israel directly controls 85% of water resources in the occupied West Bank and determines how the rest is distributed. Many Palestinian villages receive water only once every 15 days.
There are nearly 300 illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which house over 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers.
So far this year, in the West Bank, Israel demolished, seized, or forced Palestinian residents to themselves demolish at least 474 Palestinian-owned structures, 150 of which were donor-funded. As a result, Israel has displaced 656 people, including 359 children.
This represents a 32% increase from last year in the number of structures demolished or seized, a 145% increase in donor-funded structures demolished, and a near 70% increase in the number of people displaced (a 75% increase in children displaced), compared with the equivalent period in 2020,
The Palestinian community of Humsa-Al Baqai’a in Area C, in the northern Jordan Valley, is located in an area now designated by Israel as a “firing zone” for military training, making Palestinian residency and access prohibited. Since 2012, the residents have been displaced, and their homes destroyed, over 50 times while Israel carries out military training.
After a 2020 mass-demolition, the global humanitarian community provided the town with 20 water tanks, which Israel immediately confiscated.
Available water for West Bank communities is often less than 50 litres/person/day (l/p/d), compared with the WHO recommendation of 100 l/p/d. Yet all households in nearby illegal Israeli settlements are connected to piped water services and have a permanent unlimited water supply at affordable prices. Settlement water consumption rates are 300–440 l/p/d, particularly in settlements focusing on agriculture.
Recently, as temperatures rose past 104 degrees Fahrenheit, Israel’s military demolished the Palestinian West Bank village of Khirbet Humsa for the sixth time in less than a year.
The military destroyed 27 residential structures, as well as animal shelters and water tanks, and removed people’s food, leaving the community without food and water. Soldiers confiscated personal items, milk for children, clothes, personal hygiene products, and plants. Eleven households, home to 70 people (including 36 children) were displaced.
The village has never been allowed a connection to water, electricity, or sewage infrastructure.
Organized aggressions by individual settlers are also daily and widespread. In June, illegal settlers in the West Bank installed a fence around a water spring to prevent dozens of Palestinian shepherds and their herds from using it. The residents had suffered repeated assaults by the settlers as well as the denial of access to their water resources.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/why-israel-isnt-different-settlements
imemc.org/article/wafa-settlers-rebuild-abandoned-outpost-near-hebron/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-colonists-fence-a-spring-to-prevent-shepherds-from-using-it/
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/15/water-war-palestinians-demand-more-water-access-from-israel
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/palestinians-strive-access-water-jordan-valley
https://www.972mag.com/west-bank-demolitions-khirbet-humsa/
Fact #190 (8/24/21)
Last month, the Israeli army raided the village Faroush Beit Dajan in the northern Jordan Valley and demolished a seven-year-old water cistern that supplied water to Palestinian farms.
As a result of the destruction, some 85 Palestinian families have been struggling to find water to feed their summer crops, which extend over 480 dunams (119 acres) of land.
The demolition continues Israel’s campaign to destroy Palestinian water sources, including springs, wells, irrigation networks, and cisterns.
The Israeli occupation specifically targets the infrastructure of Palestinian agriculture, which 99% of village residents depend on for their livelihoods. By relentlessly demolishing water tanks, irrigation networks, and water lines—and seizing springs and water sources—Israel displaces Palestinians and replaces them with Israelis.
•
In Ain al-Hilweh, in the northern Jordan Valley, one farmer, for example, has been unable to take his 500 cows to drink at their spring, which lies 1 km from his home, and which his family has been dependent on since they settled in the area more than 50 years ago. The spring is a source of freshwater for villages and hundreds of Palestinian families.
The farmer was forced to purchase water daily, both for his family's domestic use and for his cattle, spending the equivalent of $62 to buy a water tank every four days for his family, and $6,215 worth of water per month and his livestock needs.
When Palestinians protested against this seizure and disruption of their water supplies, and against the Israeli settlers forcibly taking over their water spring and turning it into a swimming pool, Israeli forces attacked them.
The Israeli military wounded 13 Palestinians, assaulted others, detained one person, and dispersed the protesters using pepper spray. The illegal Israeli settlers have now begun construction.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/08/water-wars-in-the-west-bank/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/twilight-zone/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-short-drive-from-tel-aviv-hundreds-live-without-power-or-water-1.10133876
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-israel-jordan-valley-farmers-fight-water-surval
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-attacks-palestinians-in-west-bank-wounding-13/2316173
Fact #191 (9/21/21)
The Israeli group Combatants for Peace and the Palestinian Masafer Yatta Committee south of Hebron have joined forces in a ‘Water is a Right’ campaign aimed at raising international awareness about Israel’s depriving Palestinians in Area C of water to drive then off their land. On Sept. 17, Israeli forces attacked and injured 5 Combatant for Peace activists and a journalist and arrested 7 others who were in a convoy taking water to a farming family in Al-Tiwani village in Masafer Yatta.
https://imemc.org/article/soldiers-injure-dozens-of-nonviolent-protesters-near-yatta/?fbclid=IwAR04TiB4M5ah-dIC3KzuD0CjZ9XGpZLhfVZVwxs-KPlS3g8YIXOf9ioJWko
Fact #192 (10/5/21)
Among the “good will gestures” announced by Israel on Sept. 1 in the effort to subvert protests against
the blockade was the expansion of Gaza’s fishing zone to 15 nautical miles from shore. Fishermen
were not impressed, stating that their inability to get spare parts for their aging boats during the 15
years of closure has made it impossible to sail out that far, and that just as Israel wanted to force
Palestinian farmers off the land, it “wants to force fishermen out of the sea.” Their skepticism has been borne out by repeated attacks by the Israeli navy, beginning with a Sept. 2 attack on boats within 6 nautical miles and followed by nearly a dozen subsequent attacks, most of them occurring when
fishermen were within 3 nautical miles from shore.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-extends-gaza-fishing-zone-lets-in-more-workers-despite-border-riots/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-israel-eases-fishing-restrictions-amidst-ongoing-protests-against-blockade
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/09/israeli-goodwill-gestures-fail-hook-palestinian-fishermen
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-37/
Fact #193 (10/19/21)
On October 12, Israeli settlers installed water pipelines on Palestinian-owned land in the Ein al-Sakout area of the northern Jordan Valley so they can plant on it and then claim it as their own. This is reportedly part of a water network being constructed on thousands of acres they intend to seize in the area. Meanwhile, the Israeli High Court is considering a petition from 20 Palestinian owners of 247 acres in the northern Jordan Valley that had been declared a “closed military zone” in 1969, asking for that designation to be rescinded. The owners have been barred access to their land, while Israel has declined to evict the settlers who moved onto it and have it under well-watered cultivation.
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-colonizers-install-water-pipeline-on-palestinian-lands-ahead-of-annexing-them/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-top-court-orders-israel-to-explain-refusal-to-evict-settlers-from-palestinian-land-1.10277562
Fact #194 (11/2/21)
Al Haq, one of the groups labeled a “terrorist organization” by Israel on October 22, is the oldest human rights organization in Palestine and the entire Middle East. Established in 1979, it has been the primary source of information about what it calls the “systemic attack on the Palestinian people’s right to water and sanitation” constituting “water apartheid.” From its far-ranging 2013 report “Water for one People Only” to its close monitoring of Israel’s water practices and the regular submissions it has made to international bodies and the UN, Al Haq has played a critically important role in highlighting how Israel has utilized water as a tool to displace Palestinians and expand settlements. Thanks in considerable part to Al Haq’s research and legal advocacy, the International Criminal Court is moving ahead with a formal investigation of Israel’s alleged war crimes.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/10/27/why-would-israel-call-human-rights-terrorism/
https://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/alhaq_files/publications/Water-For-One-People-Only.pdf
https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/18474.html
Fact #195 (11/16/21)
On Nov. 4, the Israeli army poured cement into a fresh water spring on Palestinian-owned land near the West Bank village of Beit Ummar, 6 miles northeast of Hebron. The ancient village, where a permanent military checkpoint is located, has long come under relentless pressure from settlers and soldiers. Its lands have been seized for an Israeli-only by-pass road (Route 60), and the settlements ringing the town —Karmei Zur, Migdal Oz, Kfar Etzion and Efrat—frequently dump their wastewater onto its remaining fields. Back in 2010, Israeli bulldozers demolished a water well and a children’s cemetery in the village. In July 2021, 11-year-old Mohammed al-Alami was shot and killed by soldiers as he drove in Beit Ummar with his father. His 20-year-old uncle Amjad had been killed by the army in 2002 while standing in the doorway of his Beit Ummar home, and another 20-year-old, Shawkat Awad, was killed while serving as a pallbearer at Mohammed’s funeral.
https://imemc.org/article/army-pours-cement-into-water-spring-near-hebron/
http://vprofile.arij.org/hebron/pdfs/Beit%20Ummar.pdf
http://poica.org/2010/12/the-israeli-occupation-bulldozes-a-children-cemetery-in-beit-ummar/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israeli-soldiers-kill-11-year-old-palestinian-his-brother-still-hears-the-shooting-1.10097613
Fact #196 (11/30/21)
On Nov. 22, Israel, Jordan, and the UAE signed a deal in Dubai under which a large solar farm would be constructed by an Emirati company in the Jordanian desert to supply 2% of Israel’s energy needs by 2030. In return, Israel has agreed to more than double the amount of water it sells to water-starved Jordan. US climate czar John Kerry attended the signing ceremony, which was presented as a product of the Abraham Accords, praised as “a Green Blue Deal for the Middle East” and opposed by thousands of Jordanians who took to the streets in opposition. On the same day as the water-for-energy agreement was signed, Israeli soldiers ordered a halt on construction of a water well near Tubas in the West Bank, which would have supplied the irrigation needs of the village of Atuf.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-and-jordan-to-sign-deal-exchanging-water-solar-energy
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/582750-israel-jordan-uae-sign-pivotal-deal-to-swap-solar-energy
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/watch-jordanians-rally-in-protest-against-water-for-energy-deal-with-israel/
http://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/126902
Fact #197 (12/14/21)
Over the years, soldiers and settlers from 21 Israeli agricultural settlements in the Northern Jordan Valley have been steadily confiscating water sources and subjecting Palestinians to violent attacks. On Nov. 28, soldiers destroyed an irrigation water line in the Northern Jordan Valley east of Tubas and on Dec. 1, a large contingent of vehicles and 4 mounted crane trucks moved into the area and confiscated private vehicles, tractors, trucks and 4 water tanks, with the aim of displacing farmers. On Dec. 10, on the pretext of undertaking “restoration works,” Israeli settlers accompanied by construction equipment took over a water spring and structures belonging to a Khirbet Al-Farisiya resident. The spring is a vital water source for dozens of Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the area. In October, Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin vowed to double the number of settler homes in the Jordan Valley and Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, traveled to Washington to drum up opposition in Congress to any attempt by the Biden administration to impose a settlement freeze.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-israel-jordan-valley-farmers-fight-water-survival
https://thegazapost.com/en/post/132411/Settlers-assault-shepherd-injure-child-in-Northern-Plains-of-Jordan-Valley
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-47/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-colonizers-occupy-a-palestinian-spring-in-northern-plains/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/housing-ministry-looks-to-double-settler-population-in-jordan-valley-682648
Fact #198 (1/4/22)
On Dec. 21, the Bedouin community of Al Araqeeb was destroyed by Israel for the 196thtimesince 2000. After each raid by Israel’s demolition squads, Al Araqeeb residents, who hold Israeli citizenship and pay taxes, have returned to re-erect tents on their ancestral lands. Located in the Naqab (Negev) desert, Al Araqeeb is one of about 50 ‘unrecognized villages’ in the Naqab and Galilee which have been denied water, electricity and other basic services by Israel. Despite the factthat their presence pre-dates the founding of the state, residents of these communities are regarded by Israel as ‘trespassers’who stand in the way of development. In the effort to drive Al Araqeeb’s residents permanently off their land, the New York-based Jewish National Front(JNF) planted the areawith water-greedy eucalyptus trees just over a decade ago. An irrigated forest now looms in the desert where Al Araqeeb’s shepherds used to graze their flocks.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211221-israel-levels-palestinian-bedouin-village-for-14th-time-this-year/
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186018/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/jnf-plants-trees-uproot-bedouin/9072
https://www.badil.org/publications/al-majdal/issues/items/1323.html
Fact #199 (1/18/22)
On January 9, Haaretzjournalist Amira Hass reported that Israel had been delaying the entry of
replacement parts that are urgently needed to fix and maintain the water and sewage infrastructure in the Gaza Strip which was severely damaged during the May 2021 offensive. Not only has Israel barred the entry of so-called “dual use” items, but it has imposed new prohibitions and application requirements, with the result that some 500 facilities are now experiencing dire shortages, leading to the deterioration in the quality and quantity of drinking water produced by the 100 small municipal and private desalination plants, and the dumping of only partially treated wastewater into the sea. A ban instituted early last year barring the entry of steel pipes larger than 1.5 inches in diameter has meant that desalination and wastewater treatment plants damaged by bombing which require pipes of a diameter of two inches or more have gone unrepaired.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-holds-up-vital-spare-parts-for-gaza-s-water-and-sewage-systems-1.10523771
https://gisha.org/en/red-lines-gray-lists-ten-answers-to-faqs-on-israels-policy-on-entry-of-dual-use-items-into-gaza-and-the-gaza-reconstruction-mechanism/
Fact #200 (2/1/22)
The B’tselem report “State Business: Israel’s misappropriation of land in the West Bank through settler violence” highlights testimonies of Palestinians, many related to the theft of their water supply. In the words of 83-year-old Abed Daraghmeh, a resident of Kirbet Samrah in the Jordan Valley: “When the settlers came here four years ago, we thought they would eventually leave.…But then we understood they’re here for a reason and aren’t acting alone but are working with the occupation authorities… From the moment they arrived, the military provided them with everything—water, electricity, roads, transportation—to allow them to settle on our lands for good, live comfortably and enjoy everything. We, who own the land, aren’t allowed to enjoy a single cubic meter of water, even though the pipes run right past our land. They even forbid us from restoring a rainwater cistern to use that water…Our lands and those of our families are here, but we live as though we’re in prison.”
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202111_state_business
Fact #201 (2/15/22)
Israel’s new 20-foot-high, 40-mile-long wall that penetrates deep into the ground as it encircles the Gaza Strip is severely impacting wildlife, biodiversity, and water. Building the wall has further polluted Gaza’s depleted water supply and undermined the stability of the coastal aquifer. By stopping the flow of water towards the Strip, the wall prevents the water-starved territory from benefiting from rainfall outside its borders. In its Apartheid report Amnesty International states: “Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and other discriminatory policies have created a water and sanitation crisis characterized by an acute shortage of potable water, reduced ability to filter water, and water pollution. The routine power cuts and lack of equipment and resources to treat sewage, wastewater, and solid waste puts the population of Gaza at increased risks of waterborne diseases and other health problems in the context of a collapsing health sector” (p.195).
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/02/israeli-wall-harms-wildlife-gaza?fbclid=IwAR3HhjADOjmweL4BHLIrqnNzXCDSqlqhea7o0-wmpJ9gH84MmcjFp2SOhKo
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
Fact #202 (3/1/22)
Al Haq and other human rights organizations have submitted a report to the UN that includes a section on ‘Water-Apartheid’ describing the many methods used by Israel to dispossess Palestinian farmers, among them the declaration of certain areas to be ‘closed military zones’: “The Israeli military declared 30,000 dunums of the Jordan River Valley – some of the most fertile agricultural land in the West Bank – to be a closed military zone.Those areas were used for the expansion of settlements for which new wells were drilled by Mekorot inside the settlements.” Israel seized control of West Bank water resources in 1967 and in 1982 transferred the Palestinian water infrastructure to the Israeli National Water Company Mekorot “which practices Jewish-only privilege over the country’s water resources” (pp.14-18).
https://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/2022/02/17/joint-submission-to-hrc-on-iccpr-1-1645107641.pdf
Fact #203 (3/15/22)
Israel has continued to fire on Palestinian fishing boats to keep them close to Gaza’s shore on nearly a daily basis. The Amnesty International report Israel’s Apartheid against Palestiniansstates that in 1995 Israel agreed to allow boats within a 20 nautical mile zone from the Gaza coastline, but “ever since the discovery of natural oil and gas in 1999, Israel has repeatedly changed the demarcation of Gaza’s maritime space, sometimes reducing it to a mere 3 nautical miles,causing deliberate harm to a sector that is struggling to survive.” It then quotes an Israeli senior naval official: “These fields have strategic significance and could be easily a target for our neighbors... Usually to protect an area, we just make a sterile zone around it” (p. 185). According to UNCTAD, the Palestinian economy has lost at least $2.57 billion since drilling began in 2000 in the gas fields 22 miles from Gaza’s coast (p. 190).
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-navy-attacks-palestinian-fishing-boats-in-rafah/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-navy-fires-live-rounds-at-fishing-boats-in-gaza-2/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
Fact #204 (3/29/22)
March 22, World Water Day, put a spotlight on the water calamity in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli group Gisha issued the report “Still Waters” that declares: “Access to water and sanitation services is a basic human need, fundamental right and patently humanitarian imperative. Israel’s control over the crossings has far-reaching ramifications for living conditions in Gaza. This control comes with legal and moral obligations to protect human rights and ensure access to everything needed to facilitate normal life, all the more so given the far-reaching damage caused to infrastructure by Israel’s assault on the Strip in May 2021. However, instead of fulfilling its obligations towards Gaza’s two million residents, half of whom are children, Israel is cynically exploiting its control of the crossings and deliberately undermining even the basic maintenance of water and sanitation services. This cruel conduct is wrong and illegal, and it must come to an end” (in bold in the report). Mazen Al-Banna from Gaza’s Water & Environmental Quality Authority pointed to dangerous salinity levels and the fact that 98% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, and said the blockade has made it impossible to improve the water situation.
https://gisha.org/en/still-waters/?mc_cid=12cb5da8ed&mc_eid=dc60fbdf23
https://gisha.org/en/isnt-water-humanitarian-too/
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220322-gaza-underground-water-supply-faces-dangerous-salinity-crisis/
Fact #205 (4/12/22)
The Amnesty International report Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians quotes Zakaria Baker, the coordinator of Gaza’s local Fishermen Committees. Over the last few years, Baker stated, there has been an increase in the cases where Israeli navy officers order Palestinian fisherman to strip off their clothes and swim to their vessels: “The navy demands that fishermen swim over to them naked regardless of how cold the water is. In the winter, they need to swim in really cold water. This is not just a violation of their dignity, it also puts their lives at risk for no reason” (p. 186). The navy continues to attack Palestinian fishing boats off the Gaza coast nearly every day and on April 9 arrested fishermen and confiscated their boats and equipment.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-navy-fires-at-palestinian-fishing-boats-in-gaza/
https://imemc.org/article/israeli-navy-abducts-two-fishermen-in-gaza-9/
Fact #206 (4/26/22)
While Palestinians thirst for water, Israel is planning to raise the level of the Sea of Galilee with water from one of its desalination plants. The announcement was made as the level of the freshwater lake reached its highest level in 30 years thanks to heavy spring rains. Israel currently has five large desalination plants and according to the Ministry of Finance is building two more which would collectively meet up to 90% of its municipal and industrial water needs. Meanwhile, Israel continues to take an estimated 85% of the water from West Bank aquifers for its own use and that of its settlements and bars Palestinians from digging wells and cisterns and collecting rainwater.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/to-combat-climate-threats-israel-to-top-off-sea-of-galilee-with-desalinated-water/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sea-of-galilee-nears-maximum-capacity-for-first-time-in-30-years/
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/general/project-water-desalination-background
Fact #207 (5/24/22)
Fourteen Palestinian villages in the Masafer Yatta area in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank provide homes to 13,000 inhabitants. Since the early 19th century, they have relied on farming and husbandry of sheep and goats for their income.
In the 1980s the Israeli army designated part of the area a “closed military zone” for training and, according to the United Nations, “sought to remove the communities on this basis.”
Palestinian residents continue to face evacuation and demolition of their homes, cisterns, water mains, roads, structures, and schools. Israeli military equipped with bulldozers destroys it all. Israel forbids Palestinians to build homes on their own land, connect to water and power grids, and graze livestock.
In addition to using the area as a training zone, Israeli has expropriated huge amounts of land from residents to establish Israeli settlements (illegal under international law), whose residents regularly raid the community, viciously attack residents, and destroy structures. During one attack that injured several villagers, a toddler’s skull was fractured by rocks thrown by settlers. The child was in bed.
Israel now plans to build 4,000 new settlement units, requiring the demolition of 12 villages in Masafer Yatta, and the seizure of nearly 5,500 acres of land.
Israel controls more than 95% of the natural water wells in the West Bank. Illegal settlers enjoy running water throughout the year that is diverted from Palestinian use. Israel provides the average illegal settlement household 7.5 times more water than the average Palestinian household, whose available water is vastly lower than the World Health Organization’s recommended amount.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israels-new-settlement-build-blatant-challenge-us-says-palestinian-authority
https://imemc.org/article/soldiers-injure-dozens-of-nonviolent-protesters-near-yatta/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jordan-warns-against-eviction-of-palestinians-in-south-hebron-hills-area/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/6/palestinian-bedouins-in-hebron-face-demolitions-settler-attacks
Fact #208 (6/21/22)
In the occupied West Bank last week, without giving notice to residents, Israel’s military forces demolished a groundwater well that served an entire town, then permanently sealed the well with stones and cement.
The planned and deliberate destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure, including pipelines, wells, and reservoirs, the denial of construction permits, and the confiscation and control of Palestinian natural water resources have left the population in the West Bank at extreme risk of severe water scarcity.
Illegal Israeli settlers have access to 320 litres of water per person per day, which is more than the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum of 100 litres. Palestinians in Areas A
and B are limited to 75–100 litres per person per day. Palestinians in Area C are restricted to 30 to 50 litres per person per day.
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/129570
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/commission-inquiry-occupied-palestinian-territory-including-east-jerusalem
Fact #209 (8/16/22)
The 2.1 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been suffering from an acute electricity crisis since 2006, when Israel bombed the Gaza Strip’s only power plant. Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza this month caused power outages of up to 20 hours a day.
These electrical outages devastate the already severely damaged water and sewage infrastructure by disrupting the operation of potable wells, wastewater pumps, and treatment plants.
In the Gaza Strip, even before Israel’s recent bombings—
• 98% of the water is not fit for human consumption.
• Less than 10% of the population has direct access to clean and safe drinking water.
• The annual supply of safe drinking water from all sources is only 21.8 million cubic meters—while the demand exceeds 130 million cubic meters.
• 97% of the population must rely on informal, unregulated private water tankers for drinking water, and pay exorbitant rates.
• One-fourth of illnesses are waterborne. Cases of cholera, giardia, polio, and viral meningitis reflect growing concerns about the effects of biological and chemical contamination.
• About 12% of child deaths are linked to intestinal infections related to contaminated water.
• Only 3.8% of the 288 authorized wells passed WHO health standards, due to salinity, sewage, and chemical runoff into the aquifer.
• Israel’s continuous damage to the water and sewage infrastructure has resulted in severe leakage. About 43% of the domestic water supply never reaches households.
• Israel’s blockade forbids much equipment and materials needed to repair the infrastructure from entering the Gaza Strip (Israel also forbids x-ray machines, claiming they can be used for military purposes).
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/08/power-outage-adds-unbearable-hardships-palestinians-gaza
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/01/gazas-forthcoming-water-crisis-might-be-worse-anything-we-have-ever-seen
https://www.anera.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Anera-Report-Water-Gaza-Palestine-spreads.pdf