The word spreads about Israel’s denial of water to Palestinians
This summer Israel’s Apartheid water policies reached a broad audience.
On August 17, 2023 the Associated Press featured a substantial piece of photojournalism, “As Israeli Settlements thrive, Palestinian taps run dry. The water crisis reflects a broader battle.” It appeared on ABC News on the same day.
It was then picked up by the Los Angeles Times on August 18, and Haaretz on August 19, accompanied by an audio reading. The Middle East Monitor republished the story on August 21 and it then appeared in a variety of online publications, including the Telegraph Herald of Dubuque, Iowa.
This is hardly the first time a mainstream news source has featured Israel’s practice of depriving Palestinians of water. For instance, on July 9, 2008 Reuters ran a piece with this headline:
“West Bank taps run dry due to drought and Israeli controls.” It reported that “parts of major West Bank cities such as Jenin, Hebron and Bethlehem have had no running water for about a month and even faucets in parts of Ramallah, the occupied West Bank’s political hub which rarely experiences cuts, have been dry for days at a time in recent weeks.”
Why? Israel had cut off their water supply and prevented Palestinians from drilling deeper wells, as their shallow ones dried up because of the drought.
On July 26, 2023 Israel utilized a relatively novel weapon in its water deprivation toolbox. The video of Israeli forces pouring cement into three Palestinian water wells near Hebron appeared on Tik Tok, X(formerly Twitter) and was picked up by several publications. The video of the incident published by Middle East Eye features an interview with one of the impacted farmers as the cement is being poured.
This was not the first time Israel has permanently sealed a Palestinian water source. The previous year Israeli forces used cement to plug two water wells providing drinking water near Tulkarem.
But this time Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy made no effort to contain his outrage:
“The evil of apartheid has many faces; this clogging of wells, in which no blood was shed and no people were arrested, is one of the ugliest. No security lie or pretext can hide the concrete-covered wells, nor can the excuse of law and order, only pure evil. Even if it is not the most horrific of the crimes committed every day in the territories, it is one of the ugliest: sealing up water wells.”
Where is the international outrage that will force an end to what Gideon Levy calls these “diabolical” practices?
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