After a month of severe water cuts, Palestinian residents of the West Bank are preparing to face an Eid without water.
Samara Al’Ko, a resident of the Aida refugee camp, 2km north of Bethlehem, has lived without running water for 10 days.
She shares a small one-bedroom home with her husband and 6 children in the centre of Aida, which she describes as the area of the camp hit hardest by the water cuts.
For Samara, the cuts are particularly distressing in the lead up to Eid, as she is faced with the prospect of trying to prepare celebrations for her family without water.
Samara Al’Ko, a resident of the Aida refugee camp.
“I feel embarrassed," she said. "You cannot do anything for your children. You cannot even clean them. You cannot cook. You cannot drink. In the past we used to get water from the neighbours, but nowadays no one is giving you water."
Abdelfattah Abusrour, General Director of the Alrowwad Society in Aida camp, said Samara's situation is not unique. Many Palestinian residents across the West Bank will struggle to find enough water this Eid.
The current round of water cuts started in the early days of June, primarily affecting water supplies in the north and central regions of the West Bank.
In the city of Bethlehem, Palestinian residents have described the cuts as the worst they have seen in five years.
Aida refugee camp
For many of Bethlehem’s Palestinian residents the current cuts have persisted for up to five weeks, in an ugly collision with this year’s month of Ramadan amid hot weather.
Dr Nader Al-Khateeb, the Palestinian Director of EcoPeace Middle East and a resident of Bethlehem, said the water shortages have forced many of the city’s already economically vulnerable Palestinian residents to pay for expensive alternative water sources and endure intensive labour to store water while fasting for Ramadan.
“All your life is disturbed," he said. "Schools have to close if there is no water. If hospitals don’t have enough running water what will happen? And it contributes to the conflict.”
Palestinian representatives have called the water cuts a deliberate effort by the state of Israel to strip Palestinians of their right to water, arguing that Jewish settlers in the West Bank continue to have access to large water supplies.
Nader Al-Khateeb examines water tanks on a roof in Bethlehem.
Dr Al-Khateeb accused the Israel water company, Mekorot, of colluding with the Israeli state to deny Palestinians water, in order to erode and limit Palestinian development in the West Bank.
“This is not a water issue, it is a political issue," he said. "Israel has invested heavily in desalination, so today there is a surplus of water in Israel and in fact, Israel is looking for consumers to buy that desalinated water. This is part of the collective punishment Palestinians are facing.”
Mekorot declined a request to comment and referred the issue to the Israeli Water Authority, who also declined to comment.
Construction in Efrat, in the West Bank.
However, in a press release yesterday from the Israel Parliament, the Knesset, MK Mordhay Yogev, head of the Subcommittee for Civil Affairs and Security in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) said the water cuts were not targeting Palestinians, but had impacted all the “the residents of Judea and Samaria – Jews and Arabs alike.”
Yogev blamed the cuts on Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and the Water Authority, who he accused of failing to address a daily shortage of 7000-9000 cubic metres of water in the West Bank.
“As a result [of the shortages], Mekorot has been forced to adjust its supply of water to the region and reduce the supply to each community, be it Israeli or Palestinian, by 15 per cent,” he said.
Mr Yogev said his committee had also been informed that 5000 cubic metres of the daily water shortage was caused by theft through illegal connections to the water infrastructure, though no evidence was provided. He's called for the urgent protection of the West Bank water infrastructure to end the current water crisis.
Aida refugee camp
Dr Al-Khateeb denounced Israel’s claims that there have been water shortages due to water theft as false.
“If people steal water, it is because they really need that water," he said. "But you cannot really steal that water, because the technology around the water infrastructure is now so advanced. The systems detect the exact position of even normal leakages straight away.”
The current bout of water cuts have occurred amid a fresh wave of controversy surrounding Israel’s ongoing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, after the release of the UN Middle East Quartet last week.
The report described 100 settlements in Area C of the West Bank as “illegal” and included recommendations that Israel implement “positive and significant policy shifts” to address the current water situation in the West Bank.
