From Occupied Palestine

Disengaged from reality
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 2 June 2004

The government hospital in Rafah last week received a donation from a Palestinian NGO - four mortuary refrigerators with room for 24 bodies, in addition to the old refrigerator, which catered for only six bodies. There won't be any need for the macabre photographs of the dead casualties, held a week or more in commercial refrigerators ordinarily used to hold food.

Thirsting for justice - violations of the human right to water in Palestine
Center for Social and Economic Rights
Report, 15 August 2003

Introduction

It is becoming more and more evident that the "Road Map" drawn up by the Quartet and promoted by the U.S. can achieve neither lasting peace nor even a fair "process" to arrive at peace. At the most basic level, the "Road Map" fails to stipulate that Israel must relinquish its matrix of control over Palestinian lives, territory and resources. As with the Oslo Accords, fundamental questions of human rights and national rights, which should form the basis of any lasting peace, have instead been pushed aside and postponed until the illusory end of the peace process.

The Water Crisis in the Occupied Territories
B'TSELEM

Israel's citizens, like those of developed countries worldwide, benefit year-round from unlimited running water to meet their household needs. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians suffer from a severe water shortage throughout the summer.

This shortage of water affects every function that water plays in human life: drinking, bathing, cleaning, and watering of crops and animals.

Water use and distribution in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
PALESTINE MONITOR

* 75% of the Occupied West Bank & Gaza Strip renewable water resources are used by Israel.

* Three million Palestinians are allowed to use 250 million cubic meters per annum (83 cubic meters for each Palestinian per year) while six million Israelis enjoy the use of 2.0 billion cubic meters (333 cubic meter for each Israeli per year), which means that one Israeli consumes as much water as do four Palestinians. Each Israeli settler is allocated 1,450 cubic meters of water per year.

Marwan Barghouti's 54-count indictment of Israel, presented at his trial
MARWAN BARGHOUTI
Tel Aviv District Court, 3 October 2002

Water war looms as Israel tells Lebanon to halt river works
ROBERT FISK
Independent, 26 September 2002

Wazzani River, southern Lebanon -- It's not much of a river. It's low enough to walk across, warm from a stone bed that attracts the autumn heat, full of tadpoles and small fish, frothing merrily in a creek below the scruffy village of Ghajar. But take a closer look and you'll see an Israeli soldier standing above the creek, on the opposite side of a maze of barbed wire, watching this little river through his binoculars. For say the word Wazzani right now, and you're talking water war. Even Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, has become involved.

Waterless world
TALAL JABARI
Al-Ahram Weekly, 22-28 August 2002

Beit Dajan, West Bank -- "We shall bloom the desolate land and convert the spacious Negev into a source of force and power, a blessing to the state of Israel," declared David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister.

Making the blooms desert
JESSICA McCALLIN
MIFTAH, 11 May 2002

Many people wonder why Israel won't give back the occupied territories in return for peace. One reason is that more than half of Israel's water supplies now come from the Mountain Aquifer and Jordan river basin, which are situated deep within them.

Jericho used to be one of Palestine's prime agricultural spots. An abundance of springs made the fertile land surrounding the ancient town famous for its oranges, bananas and strawberries. Now, all that is changing. Fields are drying up, crops are dying and farmers are being put out of work.

25, 000 lack water in Ramallah
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 2 April 2002

Some 25,000 people in Ramallah and its environs are without water after pipe lines and electricity lines were ruptured by Israel Defense Forces tank movement in the city, according to Palestinian officials.

Meanwhile, the army is preventing Ramallah residents from burying their dead, and the Ramallah Hospital morgue, capable of storing17 bodies, is overflowing, with 25 bodies awaiting burial as of last night, said hospital officials.

Separate and Unequal on the West Bank
AMIRA HASS
New York Times, 2 September 2001

Ramallah -- From my living room window in Ramallah, a Palestinian city, I see the lights of the Israeli settlement Pesagot on the opposite mountain. Across the eastern road of my neighborhood, there is an Israeli military base, protecting another settlement, Beit El. Had I wanted, as an Israeli Jew, born in West Jerusalem, I could have moved at any moment to any of these settlements. My Palestinian next-door neighbors in Ramallah, whose grandparents were born in what is now Israel, could not even think of moving to, say, Tel Aviv.