LETTER: Palestinians urgently need clean water

It is obvious that the irony of the supposed magnanimous offer to assist the SA government in dealing with our water crisis has escaped the director of public policy for the SA Zionist Federation, Benji Shulman. (“Israeli water technology could alleviate problems,” May 25)

The water and sewage situation in Gaza and the West Bank is dire. Amnesty International, Middle East Eye, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and B’Tselem have all in recent years issued damning reports on Israel’s wilful neglect of Gazan and West Bank Palestinians with regard to their water needs and sewage treatment.

In Gaza some 90%-95% of the water supply is contaminated and Israel will not allow water from the West Bank to be transferred to Gaza. Israel controls more than 80% of the West Bank’s water reserves, and the stolen water is then sold to water-stressed West Bank Palestinians at exorbitant prices.

According to the Guardian UK, Israel uses water resources as a “potent state-controlled weapon”. Illegal Jewish settlers, whose settlements are usually situated on hilltops, pump vast quantities of untreated sewage into Palestinian agricultural land below, and this continues to destroy olive trees and contaminates Palestinian food supplies.

According to the UN, more than 270 water and sewage facilities used by Palestinians in Area C, which constitutes 60% of the West Bank, have been demolished by Israel in the past five years on grounds that the infrastructure is illegal.

As the occupying power, whose water and sewage policy towards the 2-million Palestinian West Bankers is health-threatening, Israel is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention’s article 56, which requires it to ensure adequate public hygiene.

Charity begins at home, and as noble as Shulman’s offer might seem, the hapless 5-million Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, who live under brutal occupation, are in urgent need of access to safe and clean water as well as adequate sewage treatment plants.

The SA water crisis is largely the result of corruption and mismanagement over many years, whereas in Israel there is a deliberate and systematic policy carried by the government, the Israeli army and settlers to make life as unbearable as possible for Palestinians so that they leave their homeland.

Gunvant Govindjee
Ormonde

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