Amnesty International on Water in Palestine
Yesterday Amnesty International charged that Israel is depriving Palestinians of crucial water resources. In effect, they are artificially creating a shortage, which in turn is causing a host of other problems like chronic illnesses. Some Palestinians live on about 20 litres a day. To put that in perspective, that’s a little over 3 flushes in a modern toilet.
Predictably, the Israeli government is denying the findings, and an American group, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is scouring the report to find falsehoods. So far, they claim to have found one, in which Amnesty reported that the town of Beit Ula was not connected to the water network. As evidence they cited a report from a Palestinian NGO released in 2009, which said the town is connected to the network. So while Amnesty did get the fact wrong, it doesn’t change the reality that most Palestinians living in Beit Ula cannot get water from the network because the infrastructure is old and deteriorated. For them, it might as well not be connected. Most residents get their water from cisterns that were systematically destroyed by the Israeli army last year. CAMERA conveniently forgot to mention that.
