October 31, 2009

AMMAN - The National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) on Saturday urged international human rights agencies to expose Israel's practices that aim to deny Palestinians the right to have access to clean water.

In a statement issued yesterday in response to a recently issued report by Amnesty International (AI), the NCHR said the report represents "a cry for justice and rings the bell for the international community to take immediate action to put an end to Israel's unilateral measures in the occupied territories", such as preventing the Palestinians from developing water resources by expropriating their underground water sources, as well as demolishing houses, water grids and field crops.

In its October 27 report, AI accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies, adding "these unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there".

"The facts on the ground in the occupied lands reflect the serious and critical violations to human rights in general and the Palestinians in particular by the Israelis. Their unacceptable policies and practices contradict all international agreements and covenants they have ratified such as the right to life, right to equality, right to adequate living conditions and the right to have clean and safe drinking water," the NCHR said.

The NCHR referred in its statement to articles 3 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which call on the occupying country to secure good living conditions for the occupied people, including healthy and clean drinking water, adding that Article 54 of the first additional protocol (1977) to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the destruction or removal of food, water and other resources needed for survival.

"Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza, the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse," said Donatella Rovera, AI’s researcher on Israel and the OPT, said in a press release posted on the website of the London-based organisation.

The report revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water.

"Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 per cent," the report said, adding that the Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.

"While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day, four times as much," the report said, highlighting that in some rural communities, Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.

Amnesty added that some 180,000-200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater, pointing out that Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools.

"Numbering about 450,000, the settlers use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million," according to the report.

In the Gaza Strip, the report noted, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption, yet Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.

"Over more than 40 years of occupation, restrictions imposed by Israel on the Palestinians’ access to water have prevented the development of water infrastructure and facilities in the OPT, consequently denying hundreds of thousands of Palestinians the right to live a normal life, to have adequate food, housing, or health, and to economic development," said Rovera.

Amnesty said Israel has also imposed a complex system of permits that the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT, adding that applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.

In rural areas, Palestinian villagers are continuously struggling to find enough water for their basic needs, as the Israeli army often destroys their rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates their water tankers, the report said, underlining that irrigation sprinklers water the fields in the midday sun in nearby Israeli settlements, where much water is wasted as it evaporates before even reaching the ground.

"Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources," Rovera added.