By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – “We only get running water a few hours each day,” says Aziz Harbi, a Palestinian Authority security officer who lives with his family in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.  “The water is not drinkable.  We use it for cleaning and washing.  But it is dirty.  After a shower, the skin is irritated, and my children often come out with a rash.”

Since the Israeli military siege on Gaza in January 2009, only 7% of the available water supply meets the standards of the World Health Organization.  The World Bank reports that in 2005 the Gaza Strip began a “well-designed master plan for water and sanitation,” though less than 2% of the plan has been fully implemented, and since the end of the siege, progress has frozen.  In addition, the water filtration systems were damaged and the aquifer beneath the Gaza Strip dropped, saline water from the Mediterranean has flooded into the aquifer. 

A recent World Bank report found that Israel uses four times more water than the Palestinians from a vital West Bank aquifer.  Israelis use 240 cubic meters of water per person each year, compared with 125 cubic meters per person in the Gaza Strip and 75 cubic meters in the West Bank. Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli head of Friends of the Earth Middle East said there was a “clear failure” to meet the water needs of both Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israel was taking the “lion’s share.”

As severe as the water crisis is in Gaza, matters are more complicated in the West Bank.  According to several agreements, the mountain aquifer running the length of the West Bank is to be shared by Israel and the Palestinians, but the World Bank reports that the Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water.  Palestinian water sources are often contaminated by pesticides and fertilizers from Israeli settlements.  Palestinians are also concerned by the impact of the Israeli separation barrier, which dips into the West Bank to include water sources, and which many Palestinians contend undermines Palestinians’ hope of a viable independent state.

For more information, please see:

The Guardian – Israelis Get Four-Fifths of Scarce West Bank Water, says World Bank – 27 May 2009

The Electronic Intifada – Israeli Army Contaminating Water Sources – 25 May 2009

The National – Water Fails to Flow Fairly in West Bank – 20 April 2009

Palestinian Hydrology Group – The Water and Sanitation – 12 January 2009 

Palestinian Monitor – Water – 18 December 2008