Water Fact May 15, 2023

Water Fact:  May 15, 2023
 
The ongoing Nakba has been lubricated by Israel’s water apartheid policies
 
May 15th is the Palestinian ‘Nakba Day’ (the Catastrophe), commemorating the expulsion of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland which took place shortly before and after the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.  
 
Seventy-five years later, the Nakba and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians throughout the decades were remembered in the halls of the US Congress.   On May 10, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy held a celebration of US-Israel ties in the Capitol’s Visitor Center after ousting Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s planned Nakba commemoration from the space that she had already reserved.  But thanks to the intercession of Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Tlaib held a packed, standing room only Nakba event in the Senate office building on the same day.  
 
She also re-introduced her resolution, ‘Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugees’ Rights’ (H.Res.388), with five co-sponsors (Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, McCollum, Bowman and Bush). The strongly-worded resolution describes the Nakba as an “ongoing process characterized by Israel’s separate-and-unequal laws and policies toward Palestinians, including the destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction and expansion of illegal settlements, and Israel’s confinement of Palestinians to ever-shrinking areas of land.” The resolution lists steps the US should take to end “its complicity in Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people.” 
 
There is no sign of that happening, as the US clings to its ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ rhetoric no matter what its armed forces are doing from the air and on the ground.   On May 2, Khader Adnan, a prominent Islamic Jihad leader who was never charged with a violent crime, died after a hunger strike lasting 87 days, becoming at least the seventh Palestinian prisoner to die of a hunger strike since 1970.  Israel responded to rockets fired in protest from the besieged Gaza Strip with ‘Operation Shield and Arrow,’ its 15thmilitary aggression against Gaza since it withdrew its settlers in 2005.  Before a truce was reached on May 13, the military onslaught had killed 35 Palestinians, among them six leaders of Islamic Jihad and at least 15 civilians, including a prominent dentist and  six  children. 

Well over 100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far this year, where the practice of ‘shoot to kill’ that targets young Palestinians has become a causal matter without any pretense of accountability.   The final tally of lives taken by Israeli forces in 2023 is likely to be far higher than last year’s total of 150.   Among those shot dead at a roadblock near Hebron was a Jewish Israeli woman reportedly suffering a mental health crisis,  who was ‘neutralized’ by soldiers on May 9 thinking she was a Palestinian about to attack them.

Over the last week alone, we see the ongoing Nakba in the relentless demolition of Palestinian homes, including in Jerusalem.  We see it in the bulldozing of Palestinian land to make way for settlement expansion, and destruction of Palestinian olive trees, agricultural buildings and water tanks.  

As Israeli journalist Amira Hass states in a recent Haaretz piece, “The Nakba, a disaster of dispossession and expulsion, hasn't let up for a moment since we turned the Palestinian people into a nation of refugees.”

That ‘disaster of dispossession’ is undergirded by insidious practices described in a May 2023 report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, ‘Parched: Israel’s policy of water deprivation in the West Bank.’

The report details Israel’s theft of Palestinian water resources and the massive disparities in access to water by Palestinians and Israelis, which will be familiar to readers of our ‘Water Facts.’  It analyzes why the Joint Water Committee set up under the Oslo Accord is “a tool for promoting Israeli interests only.”  Featuring harrowing descriptions of how Palestinian families and farmers struggle to cope with ever decreasing amounts of water and the ever increasing cost to purchase it from the Israeli water company Mekorot, the report asserts that Israel “views water as another means for controlling the Palestinians” and driving them off their land. 
 
Its conclusion is worth quoting at length:

“This policy clearly demonstrates the profound dehumanization Palestinians have undergone in Israeli society. This process has enabled Israel to use the most basic of resources as a means of control and to achieve political goals, even at the cost of keeping millions of people thirsty. This dehumanization also enables the systemic, cruel campaign to deprive the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the hottest, most arid parts of the West Bank of their water sources, even in the blistering heat of summer, so Israel can rob them of what little possessions and land they have left and take over as much territory as possible, all in order to continue its settlement project and the dispossession of Palestinians. 

“The apartheid regime would not be able to pursue this policy or cement the astounding disparities between the Israeli and Palestinian water sectors without the near full immunity provided by the international community for severe violation of Palestinians’ human rights. Moreover, by supporting the discriminatory logic of the Israeli-Palestinian Water Agreement, donor countries and other countries that help uphold it are not only allowing Israel to keep up this policy, but are indirectly subsidizing it.” 

And so the Nakba continues.  

NOTE: This will be our last water fact until September.