No water for Palestine
Human rights group of Amnesty International has said that Palestinians have been denied access to safe and clean water. Sources said that Israel has been denying Palestine access to clean water and has been allowing most of its unlimited supplies to the Israeli people at West Bank.
The group reported that “Swimming pools, well-watered lawns and large irrigated farms in Israeli settlements… stand in stark contrast next to Palestinian villages whose inhabitants struggle even to meet their domestic water needs”. It was given in a report released on Tuesday, the report further says that in West Bank rural communities around 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians have no access to running water while other area’s taps have gone dry.
An Amnesty researcher Donatella Rovera, said “Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank”. According to a report titles ‘Troubled waters – Palestinians denied fair access to water’ Israel’s daily water consumption is four times higher than the normal 70 liter per person consumption in the Gaza strip and West Bank.
Israel controls most of the West bank’s water supplies. The water is pumped from a Mountain called Aquifer which bridges the territory and Israel. The reports say that Israel draws more than 80% from the Mountain even though it has other water sources for itself, while on other hand Palestine’s West bank’s only water supply is the Aquifer Mountain.
Before Israel’s blockade was forced in 2007 at Gaza strip repair works were started to improve the Water supplies. But because of Israel’s blockade even the repair material is not allowed into the area. Adding more chaos to the already problems Israel’s savage attacks have destroyed most of the wells, reservoirs, pumping stations and sewage networks as though they were targeted to decrease the water supply.
Due to boundless drawing of water the situation has reached ‘crises point’ and the only source of fresh water for Gaza has been degraded, polluted and 95 % contaminated. Again as usual the Israel’s water authority has called the report biased stating that the water gap is not so big as others think and the reports were ‘biased and incorrect, at the very least’. They claimed that they have an agreement on their side called the Oslo peace agreement in which it stated that Israel is meeting its obligations but Palestine has failed to extract and recycle its own water and could not distribute it well.