New York - The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) warns on World Water Day that violations of the human right to water are intensifying in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli policies and actions are threatening the safety of, and accessibility to, basic supplies of water.
The latest assault on the Palestinian right to water is Israel’s new ‘Separation Wall’, being built inside the West Bank to separate Palestinian communities from Israel. The path of the Wall runs along the most fertile and water-rich lands of the West Bank and will alienate thousands of Palestinians from their water sources and effectively annex thousands of acres of Palestinian land to Israel. In a context where Palestinians are denied access to wage labor in Israel and have been forced to return to an agriculture-based economy, the Wall, in just its first phase, will cause several agriculture-dependent villages to lose access to 30 groundwater wells.
Water infrastructure is also being directly attacked by Israeli military forces. On January 30, 2003, the Israeli army bulldozed two wells in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, which had supplied 6,000 cubic meters of water, nearly half of the city’s supply. Residents have been strictly rationing ever since, and have even resorted to obtaining drinking water from agricultural sources not approved for human consumption. With the recent instances of the Israeli army targeting international observers trying to protect Palestinian homes and wells, the situation is further deteriorating.
Background
Israel controls and uses more than 95 % of the underground and surface water resources it shares with the West Bank and Gaza. While Palestinian water consumption does not even meet the minimum daily standard of 100 liters recommended by the World Health Organization, Israeli consumption is more than five times greater than Palestinian use; and illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza use nearly 600 liters of water every day, almost 9 times more water than Palestinians.
Since the onset of the second Intifada in 2000, Israel has used ‘security’ concerns as a pretext to intensify its destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure and appropriation of Palestinian water sources for its own use. The Israeli Army has bulldozed water pipelines and destroyed over 15 water wells, leaving Palestinian villages and towns without piped water for days on end, and sometimes completely eliminating the largest water source for many villages. Many Palestinians now depend on buying expensive, unregulated, trucked water for all their domestic water needs, but the extensive network of checkpoints and the imposition of curfew have limited their access to even this source of water. At the same time however, Israeli settlers receive a continuous supply of highly subsidized piped water from the Israeli Water Authority, Mekorot.
In November of last year the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, reaffirmed that water is a fundamental human right, stating in its General Comment #15 that “[t]he human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity.
It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.” In the General Comment, the Committee also declared that States must refrain from “limiting access to, or destroying, water services and infrastructure as a punitive measure.” Israel continues to ignore such international prohibitions on the denial of the right to water.
CESR calls on the government of Israel to cease activities that deny Palestinians access to adequate amounts of clean water, including the destruction of wells and pipes, the innumerable blockades and check points that deny passage to water trucks, and the building of any structure, such as the Wall, which will separate Palestinian communities from their water sources.
For more information on right to water violations in Palestine please visit our website at www.cesr.org/PROGRAMS/waterpalestine.htm For more information on the current water and sanitation situation in Palestine please visit the Palestinian Hydrology Group’s Palestine Water for Life Campaign: www.phg.org/campaign. For more information on the Separation Wall please visit the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network: www.pengon.org.