Plundered water boosts Israel’s surplus

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The West Bank Mountain Aquifer, Palestine’s principal water reserve, once blessed the land and its people, enabling a remarkable agriculture to flourish. A Chambers Encyclopaedia essay on Palestine and its people, published in 1878, included the following observations:

“The botany of Palestine is rich and varied, resembling that of Asia Minor. Among its trees are the pine, oak, elder and hawthorne in the northern and higher districts and olive, fig, carob and sycamore elsewhere. The cultivated fruits are the vine, apple, pear, apricot, quince, plum, orange, lime, banana, almond and prickly pear. Wheat, barley, peas, potatoes and European vegetables, cotton, millet, rice, maize and sugar cane are among its products. The date now only ripens its fruit in the south and on the sea-board. The brilliant flowers which in spring enamel the surface and tinge the entire landscape, comprise the adonis, ranunculus, mallow, poppy, pink, anemone and geranium. In the Jordan Valley, 900 or a 1000 feet below the sea-level, the vegetation is tropical in its character resembling that of Arabia; the nubk (Spina Christi), the oleander and the small yellow ‘apples of Sodom’ are conspicuous. The most valuable products of the vegetable kingdom are derived from the vine, fig, olive and mulberry trees. Wine for home use is made in all the central and southern districts; the best is made at Hebron from the grapes of Eshcol. Olive oil is a valuable export.”

Palestine’s precious water is now controlled by Israel. The foreign military Occupation diverts the water for Israel’s benefit so that Palestinians have access to even less water than that recognised by the UN as the minimum for survival – a third less, in fact. Palestinian agriculture is cursed even further by the Occupying power, depending on the area, either by denying Palestinian farmers proper access to their land or by annexation. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel takes for itself 86% of the water from the aquifer.

Oslo 2
Under belligerent military Occupation, the Palestinian people, in a hopelessly unequal bargaining position, signed away 80% of the aquifer to Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement signed in September 1995 known as Oslo 2. Israel, taking advantage of its stranglehold on Palestine, has already reduced to 14% the remaining 20% that it agreed would be allocated to Palestine. Palestinians need Israel’s permission to develop their own water resources and infrastructure and are severely restricted by the so-called Joint Water Committee (JWC). The JWC was established to implement and oversee the shared resource and, although Palestinians are allowed to sit on this committee, Israel has veto power and the final say.

Plundered Palestinian water
The Israeli Occupation uses force to prevent Palestinians digging wells and irrigating their land, both in order to make them dependent as well as to break their spirit of resistance. A German hydrologist, Clemens Messerschmid, says it is clear that Israel intends to keep Palestinians short of water. In 1982, the Israeli Army handed over the West Bank water infrastructure to the Israeli national water company Mekorot. The company sells enough water to the Palestinians to make a profit but is careful to not meet their real needs. Mekorot makes them pay a far higher price for the water than that paid by illegal Jewish colonists, who are encouraged by Israel, through generous subsidies, to move to the settlements on Occupied Palestinian land. While Palestinians go without even the bare minimum recognised by the UN, the Israeli business website ‘Globes’ celebrates the fact that Israel enjoys a water surplus. A United Nations Human Rights Council report confirms that Mekorot, and another Israeli company, siphon off water from Palestinian wells and springs to supply illegal West Bank Israeli settlements (colonies), thus reinforcing the creeping annexation. These companies pipe the water into Israel at no cost and return a fraction of it to Palestinians – but at huge cost to the militarily-Occupied population.

Palestinians are prohibited even from collecting rainwater
Israel’s Military Order No.158 forbids Palestinians any rights to drilling, irrigation or conservation of water. The building of reservoirs or collection of water in rooftop tanks is prohibited, with the Israeli Army destroying wells and invading homes to destroy rooftop water storage. This is what the so-called ‘peace talks’ and Oslo Accords mean in practice. While the Oslo charade gave the world the impression that Palestinians would at last be allowed to drill wells, in fact it ensured that such access would be subject to Israeli permits which, of course, continue to be denied to the Occupied population. Because of Oslo and the ‘integration’ of the water supply, the Israeli Occupation looks irreversible and, although on paper the Palestinians are ‘responsible’ for their water supply, in reality they are permitted no sovereignty over it. By denying the Palestinian right to drill wells, Israel is fully aware that the water, which should benefit the people, will flow underground towards the hills and into Israeli hands.

Israel’s annexation Wall
The Wall Israel is building in the West Bank winds through Palestinian land, well beyond the Green Line. The annexed land includes rich, fertile farmland and large groundwater aquifers, particularly around the provinces of Jenin, Qalqiliya and Tulkarem. Many wells and reservoirs have thus been lost to the Palestinian community.

Settler aggression
A report by the UN describes how “Palestinians have increasingly lost access to water sources in the West Bank as a result of the takeover of springs by Israeli settlers, who have used threats, intimidation and fences to ensure control of water points close to the settlements.” The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) examined 50 springs on Palestinian land close to Israeli settlements and found that Palestinians were deterred from accessing their springs through “intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers” and that “Palestinian access has been prevented by physical obstacles, including the fencing of the spring area, and its ‘de facto annexation’ to the settlement.”

Ideology
In October 1993, The New York Times reported Israel’s negotiator on water, Avraham Katz-Oz, asserting Israel’s position on the West Bank Mountain aquifer: “There is no reason for Palestinians to claim that just because they sit on lands, they have the rights to that water.” So by this Zionist logic it would appear that Israel would have the world accept that belligerent foreign military Occupation confers rights to the conquerer that supplant those of the native people. The proponent of another state-sponsored ideology, Adolf Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf expressed the concept this way: “For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude.” Israeli settler fanatics claim that the whole of Palestine is their land!

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Gaza and Israel’s criminal water blockade
Israel has installed a large number of deep wells along the Gaza border in order to extract as much groundwater as possible before it can reach the blockaded territory. See detailed information and maps concerning the Israeli Occupation control of Palestine’s water. Israel also targets Gaza’s water resources and water treatment facilities when carrying out its periodic blitzes on the region. Reservoirs, pumping stations and agricultural water storage facilities sustain direct aerial attack by Israeli war-planes. From 2005 to May 2014, Israeli military incursions had destroyed at least 300 agricultural wells in Gaza.

Nature may prove to be Israel’s nemesis
An electricity crisis began in June 2006 when Israel destroyed the transformers in Gaza’s power station. Although it was later partially restored, power from the station remains woefully inadequate. In May this year, with the collapse of the sewage system, raw sewage entered the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council’s reservoir in Israel. “Without electricity, water cannot be produced and wastewater cannot be treated,” said Eilon Adar, a hydrologist and the former director of Ben-Gurion University’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology in Beersheba. This is just the beginning. Adar fears that a catastrophe is in the making. Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies warns of immediate risk and the urgent need for efficient wastewater treatment.

Beit Ummar’s water shortage
One example of the psychologically damaging effects of Israel’s malevolent water control is to be found around the West Bank village Beit Ummar. One farmer has had to cut agricultural production by nearly 85%. He will no longer be able to pay for his children’s university education and on top of that he faces a massive loss of land to local Israeli settlers. The colonists, who have already destroyed 35 of his apricot trees, now threaten his land because they want to join the settlements of Gush Etzion and Beit Al-Barakeh into one large area. When they complained to the Israeli police about the loss of the family’s trees, the settlers came and set fire to three of the farmer’s tractors. While Palestinian crops are dying for lack of water, settler farms are flourishing and their homes sport green lawns and well-filled swimming pools.

Complicity
Last year the European Union, USAID, UAWC and other NGOs funded water tanks for Beit Ummar – Israel has issued destruction orders on all of them. In May this year, Israel also ordered the destruction of four wells and agricultural facilities in the village of Qusra that had been built with Dutch financial support. Western leaders, politicians and diplomats cannot possibly get away with saying that they have no knowledge of Israel’s intentions. Former Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, informed the Knesset in October 1995 that Israel would not compromise on its claim to annexed West Bank territory, which he referred to as Judea and Samaria. Further, he declared that no so-called Palestinian State would ever be allowed full sovereignty and that East Jerusalem must remain annexed to Israel. Rabin declared that: “The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.” The silence of Western governments with regard to Israel’s self-serving appropriation of Palestinian water amounts to acquiescence.

Subsidising water supply – send the bill to Israel
Here is further proof that the Israeli Occupation-induced Palestinian water catastrophe is recognised globally: an international NGO called GVC, together with UNICEF, is about to co-ordinate with the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) in a project to help communities whose water consumption has been cut to less than 30 litres per capita per day (30 l/c/d). Thirty-three schools belonging to these communities will also be allocated five litres per day per pupil and two clinics will receive 10 l/c/d, free of charge. The distribution will be based on a coupon system sold by community representatives in co-ordination with the Joint Service Councils of the targeted areas. The project is expected to start this month and will cost approximately US$500,000.

UN report says Israel could be prosecuted for war crimes
In 2013, UN human rights investigators called on Israel to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all half-a-million Jewish settlers from the Occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes. Christine Chanet, the French judge who led the inquiry, told a news conference that: “These offences are falling into the provision of Article 8 of the ICC statutes. Article 8 of the ICC statute is in the chapter of war crimes . . .” The settlements contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding the transfer of civilian populations into Occupied territory.

The report’s independent UN investigators heard testimony attesting to the damage to Palestinian livelihoods as a result of Israeli settlement colonies. The settlements impeded the Palestinian population’s access to its own water and the economy was being sabotaged by land theft and the destruction and/or removal of olive trees. Referring to Jewish settler aggression, the report emphasised that, “the motivation behind this violence and the intimidation against the Palestinians as well as their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands and allow the settlements to expand.” The effect of all this on the lives of the Palestinian population was also referred to. The settlements, it said, were “leading to a creeping annexation . . .” and that to “maintain such a system of segregation you need strict police and army control. It means a lot of checkpoints, violation of freedom of movement, no access to natural resources, demolition of houses and sometimes even destroying the trees.”

National’s ‘independent’ voice remains silent
In May 2015, New Zealand Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, pledged that our country would provide an independent voice as it took up its seat as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. “New Zealand’s term on the Security Council will place us at the heart of international decision-making for the next two years,” said McCully. New Zealand’s term on the Security Council runs until the end of 2016 but, far from being independent, New Zealand has obediently toed the official line, promoting the ‘two-state negotiated settlement’ fraud that buys time for Israel to continually expand its settlements. New Zealand has uttered not one word at the Security Council in condemnation of Israel’s self-serving takeover of Palestinian water, neither has it in any way called for Israel to be brought to account. The UN report referred to above provides sufficient reason for New Zealand’s Ambassador at the Security Council to speak out for justice and human rights. If he should remain silent, then we must demand that our Government take appropriate action to raise the matter!

Labour comfortable with Government inaction at Security Council
In 2008 New Zealand’s Labour Party claimed that its aim was to “create an international system which is rules-based rather than one where countries impose their will on others by virtue of their size and power.” Yet Labour has raised no note of criticism over the National Government’s failure to witness for truth at the Security Council, rather the opposite. In March this year, Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, David Shearer, speaking about New Zealand’s performance at the Security Council, said: “We’re doing a really good job and we’re being well respected.” If Labour has a conscience it will surely stir itself and take the National Government to task over its failure to condemn the water crisis that Israel imposes upon the Palestinian people.

We can do better
Last month US Congressional Representatives warned that the absence of immediate action to purify Gaza’s waste-water would lead to severe environmental hazards that would threaten the health of both Palestinians and Israelis. In a letter to Israel’s Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and Energy Minister, Yuval Steinitz, the Congressional Representatives clearly outlined Israel’s responsibility for the abysmal state of Gaza’s water supply and the lack of sewage treatment. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn continues bravely to hold his ground in support of Palestine and international humanitarian law and there is no excuse for the Labour Party in New Zealand to stay as quiet as the National Government.

Outside interference and power politics have wreaked havoc in the Middle East and for that, in various ways, we all bear responsibility. Whatever their shortcomings, the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council present platforms for debate and reform based upon international law. For too long the Fourth Geneva Convention has been set aside – and the result has been catastrophic. Instead of listening solely to each other, world leaders should heed the voices of the global community. They ought to take seriously the example of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that is so much in harmony with the spirit that led to the establishment of international humanitarian law. End the silence – we must all speak up and force the debate – not only in our Parliament but also at every international forum, in the news media, the street and everywhere humanity meets to exchange ideas and co-operate. Saying we did not know is inexcusable.

23 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent work, Leslie. 🙂

    Hopefully the Anti Defamation League will be along soon to call you antisemitic and explain that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ using as much genocide as needed to do so.

    They would need to do some serious cheating – your post is far too cogent and well referenced to be argued against using logic. Ad hominem attack will be needed – let’s see who’s first up.

    • Thanks George,
      Ad hominem attack? Bring it on! But there’s not much likelihood of a serious attempt. Unlike in Australia, the US and the UK, in New Zealand the favoured Zionist weapon is silence. Whenever Zionists do speak out here their preferred tactic is to change the subject and divert attention away from what’s being discussed. Another diversion they employ is to point to evils committed elsewhere and complain that Israel is being ‘singled out’. These evasions are, of course, an admission of failure to deal with the evidence of Israel’s daily cruelties and violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

  2. Thinking people are coming to grips with the fact that Israel was set up as Headquarters for the Rothschild and not Jewish people. My belief and hope is that Putin will be the one to restore the land of Palestine to the rightful owners. Perhaps once the Khazarian Zionists have gone we may see the peoples of Israel and Palestine living in peace with no borders. God Willing. I wonder about the UN as it is a corporation (bankrupt along with US Inc) controlled by Rockefeller.

  3. Lebanon has water and is in Israel’s sights for expansion. This has already been spoken about with the usual hubris, bullshit, Zionistcentic, sick “rationale” as a defensive “right” for Israel.

    A manufactures incident will probably be generated as a trigger to invasion. The usual pattern.

    There is no boundary for the Zionist who control world banking and most Govts.

    • You 1878 account was a bit on the romantic side – before the Jews took over it was a flyblown hole populated mostly by goats.

      Ah, the stand-by justification of land-grabbing by an aggressive newcomer; “no one was here”. The other version is, “well, there were a few people here, but they weren’t doing anything with it”. And the third rationale, “There were people here but they ‘voluntarily’ sold it to us for half a dozen blankets, a bucket of beads, and lifetime subscription to Readers Digest“.

      In other words, Andrew, it was a crap excuse before and it’s a crap excuse now.

      And by the way, those “goats” had owners; (by 1948) the population was 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews.

      ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#British_Mandate_era

      As usual, you know very little of what you’re talking about.

      • Quoting the Wikipedia you referenced Frank:

        “It is known that the Arab population of Palestine doubled during the British Mandate era, from 670,000 in 1922 to over 1.2 million in 1948”

        and

        “It is known that significant Egyptian migration to Palestine happened at the end of the 18th century due to a severe famine in Egypt, and that several waves of Egyptian immigrants came even earlier due to escape natural disasters such as droughts and plagues, government oppression, taxes, and military conscription”

        and

        “In the 19th century, large numbers of Egyptians fled to Palestine to escape the military conscription and forced labor projects in the Nile Delta under Muhammad Ali. Following the First Egyptian-Ottoman War, which saw the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, more Egyptians were brought to Palestine as forced laborers. Following the Second Egyptian-Ottoman War, which saw Egyptian rule in Palestine terminated, massive numbers of soldiers deserted during the Egyptian army’s retreat from Palestine to permanently settle there. Egyptians settled mainly in Jaffa, the Coastal plain, Samaria and in Wadi Ara. In the southern plain there were 19 villages with Egyptian populations, while in Jaffa there were some 500 Egyptian families with a population of over 2,000 people. The largest rural concentration of Egyptian immigrants was in the Sharon region”

        and

        “In 1878, following Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, many Bosnian Muslims, apprehensive of living under Christian rule, emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, and significant numbers went to Palestine, where most adopted the surname Bushnak. To this day, Bushnak remains a common surname among Palestinians of Bosnian origin”

        So a very large slice of the Arab population in Palestine, possibly a majority, were recent immigrants, fleeing from Muslim despots (sounds just like today!). In fact Yassar Arafat himself was an Egyptian national.

        To wrap this up let’s go back to the 19th century again and listen to Mark Twain:

        “….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.” (The Innocents Abroad, p. 361-362)

        • None of which disproves the simple facts I quoted (and referenced) that Palestine was not “empty”.

          As for Mark Twain, well, it depends where he was looking at the time (apart from the bottom of his whiskey glass).

          To repeat, Andrew, justification of invasion and colonisation cannot ever be made using the hackneyed, parroted cliche that “there was no one here when we arrived”. That is bullshit that will never stand up.

          We might as well occupy your home when you go out, leaving your place empty. Do you think that would be justified?

          Well then, don’t try using that crap here.

        • Doesn’t change a thing, Andrew. Admit it, Palestinians were there, living, working, farming, enjoying their birthright before being displaced by colonising Zionists.

          It’s bullshit that the place was empty. You might as well say Australia was empty, or New zealand, or the Americas. It wasn’t empty until fucking invaders colonized and displaced the local populace.

          You’re a shocking excuse for a human being, Andrew.

        • ANdrew, the “empty spaces” argument is the same used by white colonists when they arrived in Australia. IT was a flawed argument then, and it’s a flawed argument now.

          THere have been Palestinians living in Palestine for thousands of years and your piss-poor rewriting of history shows how bankrupt you are of real ideas.

    • Thanks for that , Andrew – please ask some of your friends to come and power up the discussion 🙂

    • Andrew your dreams lack reality. The flyblown hole may be closer to you than what you think.
      Genocide is progress in the eyes of some obviously.
      What is your end game.

  4. Hi Leslie. Its a heartbreaking story in Palestine and incomprehensible to me how anybody can justify treating people in this way. I recently watched the doco five broken cameras about one Palestinian villages terrible struggles to survive. It is an affectiing and distressing watch. I was wondering if you could suggest an organisation to send some money to to help in some small way?

    • Hi Mike K,
      Thanks for commenting, yes the daily cruelty suffered by the Palestinian people is a tragedy that must be brought to a halt. From the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem to Gaza there is nothing but oppression suffered by Palestinians.

      There are many Palestinian support organisations worldwide and in New Zealand that would welcome contributions to enable them to work as effectively as possible. The really important thing is to get the truth out to the vast majority of people who really have little idea of the true enormity of Israel’s human rights abuses. You might also be interested in receiving the daily newsletter In Occupied Palestine (for further details, see http://www.palestine.co.nz the website of Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa/New Zealand (PHRC).

      The PHRC is part of a wider New Zealand coalition of activist organisations, NZ Solidarity Network http://www.palestinesolidaritynz.net that would also welcome donations.

      Worldwide there are also many organisations, indeed, too many to name them all here! It is worth mentioning though, the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace [https://org.salsalabs.com/o/301/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=14172&track=dareennation] because of its dedication in giving the lie to the claim that the Zionist ideology speaks for all Jews.

      Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. She has written an account of her experiences in Palestine under Israeli military Occupation in a book entitled Witness in Palestine [https://www.amazon.com/Witness-Palestine-American-Occupied-Territories/dp/1594513074]. There is also a video, Life in Occupied Palestine [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_MDC2Gty4I] which encapsulates much of what is in the book. Another video account of Zionist atrocities in Palestine, well worth publicising can be found at [https://www.causes.com/posts/979349-please-watch-thi-svideo-please ]

      Among the many other organisations worldwide:
      Save the Children https://opt.savethechildren.net/about-us
      International Solidarity Movement https://palsolidarity.org/
      Palestine Remembered http://www.palestineremembered.com/

      While it is good that we support each other, the really important job is to make sure that our representatives, politicians and those in power are brought to understand that silence and inaction are not acceptable. Likewise, the corporate news media and other news outlets, including radio and television, must be brought to account whenever they ignore or play down Israeli violations of international humanitarian law.
      Thank you, Mike, for your concern.

  5. Severely restricting access to water to a particular national group would be considered an intolerable crime against humanity if it were done by any country other than Israel. Israel is a country run by a sadistically cruel regime…Mountain aquifers, on Palestinian land by international law, is used for swimming pools for the ‘chosen ones’, while the natives have less water than what is needed for basic health by WTO standards.

    Answer to Mike K…I recommend he visit the website kiaoragaza.net to find out how to send money.

    • Thanks for that Lois. I’ll check it out now. The proper name for the system erected against the Palestinians is fascism. Failure to name it as such allows the terrible crimes against Palestinians to be accepted. The aim of the fascist system erected against the Palestinians is genocide. Invaders can not claim defense of their nation unless they give up the land they have invaded. These things were decided after WWII to prevent the rise of fascism again. By ignoring these things we put ourselves in the same position as any other society that has allowed a fascist state to emerge around them.

  6. The day is coming soon, I pray, that the real history of earth will be disclosed and not as it is presented at this moment. The establishment of Israel was never intended to be a Jewish homeland. Mother Earth does not present man with “wasteland”, man has done that to Mother Earth. The UN, as the President of the Philippines has recently pointed out, is useless in bringing positive change for the upliftment of humanity: https://geopolitics.co/2016/08/21/duterte-lambasts-threatens-to-quit-from-the-un-for-interfering-philippine-affairs/
    It was never intended that the UN should be a benevolent institution. It’s purpose is to be headquarters for NWO and Israel was always intended as a military launch pad against Russian, Iran and China.
    UN agencies’ role in “disposing” of useless eaters going way back is well document and this is only one example: https://ladinopresiozo.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/unicefs-role-in-sterilizing-and-killing-sephardic-children/
    The people of Israel and the people of Palestine are useless eaters to be disposed of by the NWO sooner rather than later … as are the rest of us. Is the land called New Zealand and its people in good condition and a sparkling example of how a caring” government looks after the people who (unwittingly) elected it?
    Millions and millions of people are being killed and the atrocities being committed today in African countries get no attention or headlines in MSM. Why, because they are black? So was Queen Elizabeth I.
    The 1% have twisted and distorted our history and soon we will be drip-fed the truth.

  7. In a world of suicide bombers, look for poisoned aquifers.
    In a land of dehumanizing policies, look for an inhuman response.
    Many years ago someone told me: to see if a peace accord is serious, look at the allocation of water. I think this comprehensive post answers to that.

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