Tag Archives: Water

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My visit to Palestine and why the wall will fall

Israeli separation barrier at Abu Dis, June 2004 (en wikipedia where it was uploaded as own work)

Israeli separation barrier at Abu Dis, June 2004 (en wikipedia where it was uploaded as own work)

I just came back from a short trip to Palestine and Israel. It felt good going home to Ramallah where I grew up and lived the first (and best) 17 years of my life. I also visited my extended family in Ramleh who stayed after 1948. The last time I was back was in 2003 in the midst of the 2nd intifada to see my grandmother for the last time. Things have changed since then. There are now fewer checkpoints but more security surrounding them. There is of course the eight meter separation wall built around towns and villages, cutting through streets, neighbourhoods and olive groves. Settlements surrounding Palestinian towns and villages are dotted all around the West Bank in full view. There are roads only used by settlers to reach their settlements and bypass Palestinian towns and villages. Palestinian homes now get water once or twice a week – I was very surprised that people run out of water and have to pay money to buy it.
Going back home brought back memories of the occupation while growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s in Ramallah – the army Jeeps streaming through the streets, announcing curfews through the speakers, bloody demonstrations, smell of burning tyres, young boys dragged into the army Jeeps and the bizarre behaviour (that’s what I used to think anyway) by the soldiers when they see the Palestinian flag being raised at demonstrations (The good news that after 25 years the Palestinian flag is now flying on every building, street lights, inside cars and people’s homes. We now have progress. At least the demonstrations achieved something!)
Despite the insecurity, life with family and friends and living in a close community was beautiful. I was fortunate to have loyal and loving family, friends and neighbours. Everyone looked out for each other and despite the hardship of the surrounding occupation, we were relatively happy despite the international news that portrayed otherwise. My big family – my parents and 5 children – lived together in a small 2br apartment, five siblings slept in one small room on a double bed, and we ate and shared from the same plate on a small table in the kitchen that we also used to study on. We didn’t have the comforts of everything but we were happy and made sure we looked out for each other.
As a young girl I was not aware of why we had demonstrations and curfews all the time. My family made sure we didn’t talk about politics and I grew up illiterate about the Israel/Palestine conflict (except my grandmothers 1948 stories of course). My parents wanted us to know that Israelis were normal just like us and made sure that we visited my dad’s many Jewish friends in West Jerusalem and my mum made them Palestinian food (stuffed chicken with rice mince and pine nuts – very yummy – kobbe, tabouli, stuffed zucchini and eggplant) every time they came to Ramallah to visit on Saturdays. I knew the soldiers were the same as my dad’s friends but back then could never reconcile how they could be the same guys beating young boys and taking them away in their Jeeps.
My family packed up and left in 1986 to Australia due to the constant occupation and lack of future opportunities for five bright and talented children. It took me some time to adjust to a quiet and at times “boring” life without the constant curfews and demonstrations. My curiosity to understand what is happening in Palestine started then and I devoured books that explained the conflict. The books I read were more political and historical in nature of course.
But a chance encounter with an Israeli woman in 1996 at a personal development course in Sydney changed the way I thought about the political conflict. Batsheva heard me speak and asked me where I came from, I said “Palestine”. She stared at me for a while. I realised that she was Israeli because of her accent. I was concerned that she was going to scream or swear at me. But then she came close to me and said “I am sorry for what my people did to your people”. The long hug and cathartic cries followed. I could not let go of her. She became my second mum and we became good friends. Inviting her over my place for a taste of Palestinian food was a sign that she became family.
The experience made a difference in how I viewed the conflict. Political and historical narratives are dwarfed when people see each other as human beings. I was still young then to understand the importance of this chance encounter. Batsheva was on my mind last week as I was going through the streets of Bethlehem surrounded by the separation wall; as I was going through Kalandia checkpoint waiting my turn to get through the turnstiles to be scanned and asked why I was going to Jerusalem; as I saw the settlements surrounding Palestinian towns and wondering whether its inhabitants were just like Batsheva.
Batsheva is not your average person but she is like every other human being. We all have the capacity to open our hearts to see and hear each other’s narrative and source of suffering. Once we do, the separation wall will surely fall and the checkpoints will melt and disappear. That’s when Israel and Palestine will deserve to be called the “Holy Land”. Maybe then we will let go of labels, flags, checkpoints and borders. Who needs them when their neighbour is just like Batsheva?

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Dispossession & Exploitation: Israel’s policy in the Jordan Valley & northern Dead Sea

Greenhouses of settlements next to ‘Ein al-Bida, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B'Tselem, 23 March 2011.

B’Tselem -Comprehensive Report, May 2011

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The Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area contains the largest land reserves in the West Bank. The area covers 1.6 million dunams, which constitute 28.8 percent of the West Bank. Sixty-five thousand Palestinians, live in 29 communities, and an estimated additional 15,000 Palestinians reside in dozens of small Beduin communities. Some 9,400 settlers live in the 37 settlements (including seven outposts) in the area.

Israel has instituted in this area a regime that intensively exploits its resources, to an extent greater than elsewhere in the West Bank, and which demonstrates its intention: de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area to the State of Israel.

Taking control of land

Greenhouses of settlements next to ‘Ein al-Bida, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B'Tselem, 23 March 2011.

Greenhouses of settlements next to ‘Ein al-Bida, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B'Tselem, 23 March 2011.

Israel has used various means to take control of most of the land in the area, as follows:

  • Thousands of dunams were taken from Palestinian refugees and used to build the first settlements there, beginning in 1968 and extending throughout the 1970s. This, in violation of a military order.
  • By legal manipulation, Israel has enlarged the inventory of “state land” in the area, such that 53.4 percent of the area, four times greater than pre-1967, is now deemed state land.
  • Israel has declared 45.7 percent of the area military firing zones, although they are situated next to main traffic arteries, alongside settlements’ built-up areas and farmland, or include land of settlements that is under cultivation.
  • Israel has closed some 20 percent of the land by declaring them nature reserves, although only a small section of them has been developed and made suitable for visitors. Two-thirds of the nature reserves areas are also areas of military firing zones.
  • Israel has seized lands in the northern Jordan Valley for the Separation Barrier and has placed 64 landmine fields near the route of the Jordan River. The army itself contends the landmines are no longer required for security purposes.

Using these means, Israel has taken control of 77.5 percent of the land and has prevented Palestinians from building on or using the land or remaining there. Twelve percent of the area has been allocated for settlements, including the entire northern shore of the Dead Sea. Israel’s policy has cut up the Palestinian spatial sphere and isolated Palestinian communities in the area. In the last two years, the Civil Administration has repeatedly demolished structures in the area’s Beduin communities, although some of them were established before 1967.

Taking control of water sources

The dry ‘Ein Uja spring. Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B'Tselem, 23 March 2011.

The dry ‘Ein Uja spring. Photo: Eyal Hareuveni, B'Tselem, 23 March 2011.

Israel has taken control of most of the water sources in the area and has earmarked them for the almost exclusive use of the settlers.

Most Israeli water drillings in the West Bank – 28 of the 42 drillings – are located in the Jordan Valley. These drillings provide Israel with some 32 million m3 a year, most of which is allocated to the settlements. The annual allocation of water to the area’s 9,400 settlers from the drillings, the Jordan River, treated wastewater, and artificial water reservoirs is 45 million m3. The water allocated to the settlements has enabled them to develop intensive-farming methods and to work the land year round, with most of the produce being exported. The water allocation to the settlements is almost one-third the quantity of water that is accessible to the 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Israel’s control of the water sources in the area has caused some Palestinian wells drying up and has led to a drop in the quantity of water that can be produced from other wells and from springs. In comparison, in 2008, Palestinians pumped 31 million m3, which is 44 percent less than Palestinians produced in the area prior to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement of 1995. Due to the water shortage, Palestinians were forced to neglect farmland that had been in cultivation and switch to growing less profitable crops. In the Jericho governorate, the amount of land used for agriculture is the lowest among the Palestinian governorates in the West Bank – 4.7 percent compared to an average of 25 percent in the other governorates.

Israel’s control of most of the land area also prevents equal distribution of water resources to the Palestinian communities in the area; it also prevents the movement of water to Palestinian communities outside the area. Water consumption in Beduin communities is equivalent to the quantity that the UN has set as the minimal quantity needed to survive in humanitarian-disaster areas.

Restrictions on movement

Tayasir Checkpoint, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Keren Manor, 26 December 2010, Activestills.org.

Tayasir Checkpoint, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Keren Manor, 26 December 2010, Activestills.org.

In the framework of the easing of restrictions on movement in the West Bank that was carried out in 2009, Israel did not eliminate the movement restrictions in the Jordan Valley, despite the security calm in the area. Israel still operates four checkpoints in the Jordan Valley – Tayasir, Hamra, Ma’ale Efrayim, and Yitav. At these checkpoints, only Palestinian-owned vehicles that Israel recognizes as belonging to residents of the area are allowed to pass.

The restrictions on movement seriously impair Palestinian life, since most of the educational facilities and medical clinics that are supposed to serve the local residents are situated outside the area.

Restrictions on building

Huts demolished by the Civil Administration in al-Farsiya, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Atef Abu a-Rub, B'Tselem, 19 July 2010.

Huts demolished by the Civil Administration in al-Farsiya, in the Jordan Valley. Photo: Atef Abu a-Rub, B'Tselem, 19 July 2010.

Israel’s planning policy in the Jordan Valley makes it impossible for Palestinians to build and develop their communities. The Civil Administration has prepared plans for only a tiny fraction of the Palestinian communities. Furthermore, these plans are nothing more than demarcation plans, which do not allocate land for new construction and development. For example, the plan for al-Jiftlik, the largest community in Area C (the area that is under complete Israeli control), left 40 percent of the built-up area of the village outside its borders; as a result, the houses of many families are in danger of demolition. The plan for al-Jiftlik is smaller in land area than the plan issued for the Maskiyyot settlement, although al-Jiftlik has 26 times as many residents.

Taking control of tourist sites

Israeli bathing beach Bianqini, on the northern Dead Sea. Photo: Keren Manor, 13 March 2011, Activestills.org.

Israeli bathing beach Bianqini, on the northern Dead Sea. Photo: Keren Manor, 13 March 2011, Activestills.org.

Israel has taken control of most of the prominent tourist sites in the area – the northern shore of the Dead Sea, Wadi Qelt, the Qumran caves, the springs of the ‘Ein Fashkha reserve, and the Qasr Alyahud site (where John the Baptist baptized Jesus). Israeli entities administer these sites. Israel also limits tourist access to Jericho, channeling tourists to the southern entrance to the city. As a result, few tourists visiting Jericho city spend the night there, resulting in heavy losses for the tourist industry in the city.

Exploitation of natural resources

Production room at AHAVA, which produces cosmetics based on the Dead Sea’s high-mineral-content mud. Photo: Keren Manor, 13 March 2011, Activestills.org.

Production room at AHAVA, which produces cosmetics based on the Dead Sea’s high-mineral-content mud. Photo: Keren Manor, 13 March 2011, Activestills.org.

Israel enables entrepreneurs in Israel to exploit the area’s resources. The Ahava cosmetics firm, in Kibbutz Mizpe Shalem, produces products from the high-mineral-content mud of the northern Dead Sea. An Israeli quarry next to the settlement Kokhav Hashahar produces building materials. Also, Israel has established facilities in the Jordan Valley for treating wastewater and for burying waste from Israel and from settlements.

International law prohibits the establishment of settlements in occupied territory and exploitation of the resources of occupied territory. B’Tselem calls on Israel to evacuate the settlements, to enable Palestinian access to all the lands that have been closed to them, and to allow them to use the water sources for their purposes. In addition, Israel must remove the restrictions on movement in the area and enable construction and development in the Palestinian communities. Israel must also close down the enterprises that profit from the minerals and other natural resources in the area, and it must also shut down the facilities for disposal of Israeli waste.

 

Source Link on B’Tselem Site

 

 

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The World Water Day Art Exhibit Photos

Nick Marouf, RamallahOnline, 23 March 2011

On March 22, Palestine celebrated World Water Day.  A full day programs on water use, availability, occupational constraints was enjoyed with Dabkeh folk music and dance between the lectures.

A variety of booths were setup to highlight the importance of water,along with details on various project achievements and accomplishments. A series of photos by local artists and school children were displayed to raise awareness of water issues.

Palestinians are utilizing 11%  of the available water resources, while the rest 89% is utilized by the Israelis. Generally, more than 95% from the available water supply comes from groundwater.

 

A Special screening of the film “Our Water – Their Water” was held after the official Water Day Ceremony. “Our Water – Their Water” is a 50 minute film that was produced by Imageo, a French film company, in conjunction with the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD). Prime Minister Salam Fayyad joined Minister Shaddad Attili of the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA)  in the special screening of the movie.

 

 

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Israeli Military demolishes water wells and cisterns in the South Hebron Hills

Israeli officials continue to dismantle Palestinian water infrastructure in the Beqaa Valley.

Israeli officials continue to dismantle Palestinian water infrastructure in the Beqaa Valley.

Israeli officials continue to dismantle Palestinian water infrastructure in the Beqaa Valley. (CPT)

14 December 2010 | Christian Peacemaker Teams

The Israeli military demolished three water cisterns and two wells in the Khashem Ad Daraj – Hathaleen region on Tuesday, December 14th . The military gave no reason for the destruction of the wells and cisterns.

The demolitions follow a pattern of destruction of Palestinian property by the Israeli military in Area C, as defined by the Oslo Accords. Rather than delivering the demolition orders to the residents of the villages in the area, the Israeli army instead left the orders under a stone two days earlier.

The demolished cisterns and wells supplied drinking water to the villagers as well as their sheep and goats. The wells were up to 300 meters deep and over 70 years old, pre-dating the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian Territories. International Humanitarian Law and Israeli Military law state that structures created before 1967 are protected and not to be destroyed by the occupying power.

The villages are in the southern West Bank, less than 15 km from the Dead Sea. This hilly region is arid, and receives an average yearly rainfall of between 150 – 250 mm.

Shepherding of sheep & goats is the primary source of food and income for the villages in this area. The destruction of the water wells & cisterns directly impacts their livelihood.

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Demonstration against water theft in Baqa’a Valley, Hebron

IMG_07321-600x450

23 August 2010 | ISM Media

Today (23 August 2010) a demonstration was held in the Baqa’a Valley, east of Hebron, against the theft of water from the Palestinian population in the area. About 15 water trucks were parked along Road 60, the road that runs through the valley. The intention was to protest against the fact that the farmers don’t get access to the water reservoirs in Kyriat Arba, the illegal settlement outside Hebron city. The demonstration was also attended by local farmers, standing on the side of the road with the truck drivers. Israeli police and army came to the spot, but did not interfere during the hour-long demonstration.

The water situation in Baqa’a Valley is critical, as the population depends on their farmland to support themselves, and they get a very limited amount of water from the municipality. The settlements in the Hebron district are supported by the Israeli government with the majority of the water resources, originally sourced from Bethlehem, going to settlements. The water is cut off from the Palestinian areas, which receive only a tiny percentage from the Hebron municipality, while most of it is confiscated by the Israeli state and distributed to illegal settlements like Kyriat Arba and Harsina. According to B’Tselem figures from 2008, residents in the Hebron district use on average 56 litres per capita daily – the third lowest amount in the West Bank. In general, Israelis have access to three and a half times more water than Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Baqa’a Valley is the most fertile land in the Hebron district, and the residents are living in constant fear of losing their homes and land, as the area is included in the Israeli state’s plan of dividing the West Bank and expanding and connecting the surrounding settlements. About 35 houses in Baqa’a Valley, in the so-called Area C are now facing eviction orders. In addition the residents frequently face vandalism of crops and water pipes from settlers intent on sabotaging Palestinian residents’ livelihoods. The video below from Tayush shows a recent incident in which settlers attempted to destroy water pipes in the Hebron district.

The water shortage in the Occupied Territories is a major violation of the basic human rights of Palestinians. Israel’s control over and unequal distribution of water resources has been an increasingly harmful policy since 1967 as Palestinian consumption needs have increased with population but not been met due to both neglect of existing infrastructure and failure to construct new water infrastructure, especially in rural areas. There are also numerous restrictions placed on Palestinians right to access water for example by constructing wells. As well as deliberate sabotage by settlers, leakage from pipes due to defective maintenance means that one-third of the amount of the water supplied to the West Bank annually is lost.

Under international law (Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which prohibits an occupying state from discriminating between residents of occupied territory) Israel’s clear discrimination in terms of quantity and regularity of water to supply to settlements as opposed to Palestinian areas is illegal. During the summer Palestinians’ water supplies are often reduced even further in order to meet increased demand from settlements.

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Narratives Under Siege (5): There’s Something in the Water: The Poisoning of Life in the Gaza Strip

PCHR

Gaza City, Palestine—The signs which dot the beach along the Gaza City waterfront are clear: “THIS BEACH IS POLLUTED,” they read, and yet they seem to serve only as obstacles for children running to the sea rather than warnings to be heeded of the serious health risks associated with swimming here. For those who care to doubt the sign’s veracity, one need only to stroll north along the beach for a couple hundred meters to see raw sewage being pumped directly into the Mediterranean Sea from one of the sixteen discharge sites along the coast.[1] Yet thousands fill Gaza’s beaches and waters in spite of the clear dangers. For the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, deprived of their freedom of movement, worn down daily by the all-pervasive effects of the Israeli-imposed closure, the sea is one of the few sources of respite available in their lives, and for a people that have been denied their economic livelihood, it is the only such activity that is affordable and available. The sea plays an integral part in the lives of this coastal community: it is a place to fish, to play and to gather with family. The importance of the sea to the people of Gaza cannot be understated: “without the sea there is no Gaza,” explains Abdel Haleem Abu Samra, Public Relations Officer of the Palestinian Center for Human Right’s Khan Younis Branch.

Thousands of Palestinians flock to the beaches in Gaza despite knowing it is heavily polluted. Deprived of movement beyond the tiny coastal territory, the sea—to which Gazans have a deep cultural tie—is often their only chance to escape the psychological burdens of occupation.

Thousands of Palestinians flock to the beaches in Gaza despite knowing it is heavily polluted. Deprived of movement beyond the tiny coastal territory, the sea—to which Gazans have a deep cultural tie—is often their only chance to escape the psychological burdens of occupation.

The intimate relationship Palestinians in Gaza share with the sea thus makes the current state of Gaza’s beaches and sea all the more disheartening and disconcerting. Due to the effects of the total closure imposed by Israel in 2007—principle among them a complete lack of construction materials to build new wastewater treatment facilities or spare parts to repair existing ones, as well as an acute lack of fuel and electricity to run necessary waste treatment cycles—an average of 20,000 cubic meters of raw sewage is dumped directly into the Mediterranean Sea every day, estimates Monther Shoblak, Director General of the Coastal Municipality Water Utility, although in some areas this figure reaches 70,000-80,000 cubic meters per day.[2]

Beyond tarnishing Gaza’s once pristine shores, the noxious consequences of the deterioration of the wastewater treatment operation in Gaza resulting from the closure hold much more grave implications: the Gaza Strip is, quite literally, being poisoned. 90% of the water available in Gaza from its only source—the coastal aquifer—is undrinkable, and nitrate and chloride levels reach six and seven times the international safety standards put forward by the World Health Organization (WHO). As the director of the operation to keep the water in Gaza clean, it is Monther’s job to cure this poisoning, but, like a doctor without medicine, there is little he can do while the tools he needs are denied to him and his operation under the policy of closure, which has been practiced on Gaza by Israel in various forms since 1991.

Like all Palestinians in Gaza, Monther and his staff at the Coastal Municipalities Water Utilities are forced to improvise, to make do with very little; few others, perhaps, must do so much with so little. Monther is tasked not only with disposing of the wastewater created by the 1.5 million people in this tiny strip of land but also with ensuring that they have access to safe, clean drinking water. That approximately 80% of Gaza’s population lives in refugee camps, some of the most densely populated areas on earth where adequate infrastructure is rare and the conditions for waterborne disease are rife, is the least of Monther’s concerns: for more than three years now, Monther has been forced to conduct his efforts while being deprived of the resources needed to do so, with perseverance in place of concrete and ingenuity instead of a supply of clean water. Monther analogizes the plight of Gaza’s wastewater treatment facilities with an old car that is forced into continual use despite being denied the spare parts needed for upkeep: eventually the car falls into disrepair and begins to spit plumes of jet black, highly polluted smoke—a highly relevant image in Gaza, where adulterated gasoline is the normal input into cars due to sharp restrictions on fuel under the Israeli closure.

Compounding the challenge facing Monther and his staff is the fact that they must also adapt Gaza’s deteriorating wastewater treatment facilities for a rapidly increasing population which, accordingly, produces a rapidly increasing volume of waste. Gaza’s current wastewater treatment facilities were constructed with an operational capacity of 32,000 cubic meters of waste a day. With a growth rate that is one of the world’s highest—an estimated 3.6% annually—Gaza’s surging population has overwhelmed the capacity of the waste treatment facilities, and Monther estimates that the facilities are now receiving at least 65,000 cubic meters of waste daily. Unable to handle more than half of its intake, much of the sewage is directly transported to the sea, where it is dumped completely untreated. Much of this sewage washes back onto Gaza’s shores, polluting the beaches and creating toxic swimming conditions for the countless children and adults seeking escape from the intense summer heat.

Nowhere is the deteriorating condition of Gaza’s wastewater operation more evident than in Beit Lahia, in the northern region of the Strip. One of the Gaza Strip’s three wastewater treatment facilities, the Beit Lahia station receives more than 25,000 cubic meters per day, almost twice its operational capacity. Exacerbating this problem, the facility is cutoff from access to the sea, and thus the untreated wastewater flows directly into the surrounding area, creating a cesspool—literally a lake of sewage—that now comprises approximately 450 dunums. The Beit Lahia station stands as one of the most extreme examples of the environmental and health disasters that the Israeli policy of closure has realized in the Gaza Strip. The consequences of the sewage lake have been fatal and not only because, in March 2007, the lake’s embankment broke and the subsequent flooding killed five people: the contamination of the groundwater in the northern Gaza Strip caused by the pollution has resulted in nitrate levels that are in some places seven times higher than WHO’s international safety standards.

“Nitrate is a silent killer,” says Monther: it is colorless, odorless and tasteless, but when consumed at levels even much lower than those present in Gaza, continued nitrate intake results in a reduced oxygen supply to vital tissues such as the brain. Nitrate intake is particularly dangerous for infants, for whom it can result in brain damage and possibly death. Information regarding the long term consequences for the people of Gaza in this regard is still unknown, however, for, as one donor has said: “Nowhere else in the world has such a large number of people been exposed to such high levels of nitrates for such a long period of time. There is no precedent, and no studies to help us understand what happens to people over the course of years of nitrate poisoning.”[3]

The implications of Gaza’s growing population thus also present serious concerns for the other aspect of Monther’s task, which is to provide safe and clean drinking water to the people of Gaza Strip. The coastal aquifer, which runs underground along much of the Strip, is Gaza’s only source of potable water and its most important natural resource. Historically, this aquifer has served as the lifeblood for the people of Gaza and has given rise to the agriculture, particularly citrus farms, for which the Gaza Strip is famous. Once, before the imposition of the closure policy by Israel in the early 1990s, one could dig a hole within 100 meters from the beach and find drinkable water, says Monther; now, he explains, the CMWU has been forced to issue a warning against the drilling of wells within two kilometers of the beach, which, taken in combination with the “buffer zone” unilaterally imposed by Israeli Defense Forces on Gaza’s border with Israel—tacitly acknowledged at 300 meters but practiced sometimes at distances much further—leaves little space for water extraction.

As inconvenient as it may seem, the reason behind the ruling is even more worrying: the aquifer is polluted, poisoned by sewage and depleted by the rising population which it can no longer support. Only 10% of the aquifer’s water now meets international standards for consumption, and, if no changes are made, Monther fears that this figure may soon reach 0%. A UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] report published in September 2009 stated that water extraction is roughly double the capacity of the aquifer.[4] Accordingly, Monther explains, people in Gaza are drilling more and deeper wells, further polluting the aquifer with water from the saline aquifer to the east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, and from the sea.

Confronted with this rapidly deteriorating situation and denied by Israel the resources with which to address it, Monther and his staff have been forced to adopt unconventional means of tackling Gaza’s wastewater issues. In the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, Monther explains, the wastewater situation had reached a crisis level: like Beit Hanoun, waste was being dumped directly into the land area surrounding the cities, as the area lacked both an adequate waste treatment facility and the materials needed to construct it. In response to the crisis, which threatened to deny access to safe drinking water for the combined population of 350,000, Monther and his staff turned to a practice employed by many Palestinians in Gaza surrounded by rubble left by Israel’s latest offensive: they begin to collect aggregate from the nearby remains of the Philadelphi Route, the border between Gaza and Egypt which was partially destroyed in 2008 when thousands of Palestinians flowed into Egypt seeking food and supplies. With these secondhand supplies, the CMWU was able to construct what Monther refers to as a “near state-of-the-art facility.” Although chloride levels—the counterpart to the pollution problem poisoning Gaza’s water—are still as high as six times the international standard in this southern area, Monther believes that they “are saving the city of Khan Younis by addressing the increasing levels of nitrates and removing the raw sewage from the densely populated urban areas.”

In such ways, Monther and his staff at CMWU continue their efforts to keep the water of Gaza clean, but, as he admits, “we know its not enough: the water in Gaza is deteriorating quickly. Until we find another source of water, the population in Gaza remains at great risk.” For now, the poisoning of the Gaza Strip continues, and, for all Gaza’s efforts and ingenuity, there is little that can be done to stop it as long as the closure continues. The treatment of Gaza’s wastewater cannot progress as long as Israel restricts basic building materials and adequate levels of fuel and electricity, and, with a rising population over-burdening the capacity of the current facilities, Gaza’s wastewater treatment operation only deteriorates. As Desmond Travers, a member of the UN Fact-finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, concluded in the Mission’s Report: “If these issues are not addressed Gaza may not even be habitable by WHO standards,”[5] and the September UNEP report has warned that the damage being incurred now “could take centuries to reverse.”[6] As long as the closure persists, however, the people of Gaza remain helpless to combat these problems; they have little choice but to wait, spending their time at the beach trying to ignore the pollution that piles up around them.

[1] United Nations Environmental Programme, “Environmental Assessment of the Gaza Strip Following the Escalation of Hostilities in December 2008-January 2009,” 2009.

[2] UNEP Report, 2009.

[3] Roy, Sara. “Gaza: Treading on Shards,” The Nation, 17 February 2010.

[4] UNEP Report, 2009.

[5] United Nations Document A/HRC/12-48, “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” 2009.

[6] UNEP Report, 2009.