Apartheid

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that in the Palestinian territories. In the year 2000, Israelis were still using more than three
times as much water per capita as Palestinians. While Israelis on an average enjoyed 377 m_
of water per person per year, Palestinians had to survive on 112 m_ per person per year,
according to the FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In Hebron, 70
per cent of the water went to 8,500 settlers and 30 per cent went to 250,000 Palestinians. 487
Not only the quantity, but also the quality of water differs:
Gaza is often described as one of the world’s most densely populated
places. Many of the more than one million Palestinians live in squalid
refugee camps where safe drinking water is scarce…
The approximately 6,000 Jews in Gaza live a much different life.
Many have comfortable homes with clean running water and other
amenities in heavily-guarded and fenced settlements on or near the
most fertile land. 488
Things went from bad to worse during the Israeli army attacks and curfews of 2002. In
October of that year, there were 281 Palestinian communities that were not connected to water
supply lines. More than 200,000 people in the West Bank – along with their herds and flocks
– depended on water tankers for their daily supply of water, and so, they were getting even
less water. Indeed, the simple though usually arduous task of collecting water from a well
became an adventure during which one could get shot to death, merely for breaking an Israeli
army curfew. 489
Access to water could be seen as one of the main Israeli motivations for holding on to
the Occupied Palestinian Territories and expelling their indigenous people. Most of the water
for the state of Israel reportedly comes from these territories. The water amount allowed to
Palestinians by the military regime was capped at the 1967 levels, although the Palestinian
population has grown considerably since then. To make matters worse, Palestinians are
routinely and arbitrarily, or as a measure of collective punishment, prohibited from drilling
wells, as for example from October 2002. Israeli infrastructure minister Effi Eitam has also
put a freeze on the issue of permits for future drillings in the Palestinian areas. The decision
was expected to have a disastrous effect on Palestinian agriculture and on Palestinian public
health. In the region of Salfit, which has the biggest water table in the West Bank, 16 artesian
wells have been confiscated by Israelis over the years.
[This] water has been diverted miles away to Israel itself as well as to
Jewish settlements in Salfit and the Jordan valley. Israelis and settlers
consume five times as much water as Palestinians, but Palestinians
pay 300 per cent more. This racist system of water delivery, perfected
by the South African apartheid regime, is controlled by the Israeli
private water company Merkorot. 490
487
McCallin: Making the Blooms Desert, 2002, puts Israeli water consumption two years later at 350 litres of
water per person per day, the corresponding Palestinian share being 70 litres. Brough: Israel Blockade Causing
Palestinian Food Crisis-UN, April 15, 2002, quotes the FAO alert as saying: ‘malnutrition was on the increase,
reflected in recent estimates of a 10.4 percent rise in the incidence of low birth weights and a 52 percent jump in
the still birth rate in the West Bank. See also Gershberg: Israelis and Palestinians Wake Up to Water Crisis,
2000; Fagan: Water a Vexed Issue for Israel, Palestinians, 2000. Israel’s B’tselem advocacy group for
Palestinian rights, quoted in Fagan, reports that Palestinian individuals get 30 percent less water than the 100
liters (22 gallons) a day recommended by the World Health Organization, while Israelis use 348 liters (77
gallons) a day.
488
Heritage August 24, 2000
489
Hass: Scraping the Bottom of the Cistern, 2002
490
Anna, Karin & Marie-Jo: Occupied Salfit: Living in the Stench of Settlers’ Sewage and in the Shadow of the
Apartheid Wall, 2004