“[It is] of vital importance not only to secure all water resources
already feeding the country, but also to control them at their source.”
- Chaim Weizmann, President
of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of Israel, at
the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
“And when I talk about the importance to Israel’s security, this is
not an abstract concept… It means that a housewife in Tel Aviv can open
the tap and there’s water running to it, and it’s not been dried up
because of a rash decision that handed over control of our aquifers to
the wrong hands.”
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, May 17, 1998
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
- Toni Morrison
On October 18, The Atlantic published a lengthy article by Nancy Scola exploring the possible rationale for Texas Governor and terrible GOP Presidential nominee Rick Perry’s deep and abiding affinity for Israel. Scola, after citing potential reasons such as “the religious affinities of a conservative Christian” and “a shared fighting spirit” (in addition to “oil”, which is odd considering there’s no oil in Palestine) for Perry’s affection and admiration, suggests a different explanation:
In 2009, Perry told the Jerusalem Post that part of the Texas-Israel
“connection that goes back many years” included the reality that “Israel
has a lot we can learn from, especially in the areas of water
conservation and semi-arid land.” It raised the possibility that at the
root of Perry’s deep commitment and professed connection to Israel
doesn’t lie in what Texas has in abundance — oil, faith, orneriness —
but what it lacks: water.
Scola goes on to explain that, when he was Texas agriculture
commissioner in the 1990′s, “Perry helped to lead the Texas-Israel
Exchange, a program that aims to transfer knowledge between the two
lands, where farming is a way of life but the water to do it with is
often difficult to come by” and draws an environmental and
hydrogeological parallel between the two regions. “Texas’ mountain
aquifers have their equivalent in Israel’s karst aquifers,” she writes,
before quoting UT professor and water expert David Eaton as saying,
“Israel doesn’t have enough water, but they’ve figured out how to
succeed.”
Among the ways Scola describes Israel’s victory over water scarcity
through “a variety of technologies to try to squeeze the maximum
possible water from dry land” are “projects focused on water reclamation
— that is, using treated waste water, including sewage, to irrigate,
cool, or in manufacturing processes.”
What Scola omits – and considering she devotes considerable space
(nearly 2,000 words) to this issue, the omission can not be anything but
willful and deliberate – is Palestine. In fact, the word
itself never appears in the entire article, nor is the 44-year
occupation and blockade that controls Palestinian lives each and every
day.
The reason this omission is so glaring is because over 60% of Israel’s fresh water supply comes from Palestinian aquifers in the West Bank, illegally seized in 1967 after a conflict instigated by Israel and subsequently controlled exclusively by the Israeli government and military in occupied Palestine.
An October 2009 report by Amnesty International entitled “Troubled Waters – Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water”
notes that, in 1967, “Israel forcibly took control of water resources
and imposed significant changes in the area’s water sector. This
included extracting large quantities of groundwater and diverting
surface water for its own benefit, while preventing access by the local
Palestinian population to these same resources.”
In 1982, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon transferred all West Bank water systems to the Israeli national water company Mekorot for
the nominal price of one shekel. A decade later, the Oslo accords
established a (so-called) Joint Water Management Committee, granting
Israel a veto over all water resources, facilities and infrastructure in
the West Bank.
Amnesty reveals that “[d]uring more than four decades of
occupation of the Palestinian territories Israel has overexploited
Palestinian water resources, neglected the water and sanitation
infrastructure in the OPT, and used the OPT [Occupied Palestinian
Territories] as a dumping ground for its waste – causing damage to the
groundwater resources and the environment” and that “Israeli policies
and practices in the OPT, notably the unlawful destruction and
appropriation of property, and the imposition of restrictions and other
measures which deny the Palestinians the right to water in the OPT,
violate Israel’s obligations under both human rights and humanitarian
law.”
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