Reuters’ Leaky Water Story - by Simon Plosker

...Update 2: Despite the Reuters story being debunked and failing to include any Israeli response, Haaretz has republished it on its website. Out of all the media outlets to run the story, Haaretz had the ability to follow up with Israeli sources to verify the credibility of the story. It chose not to, preferring to run with an anti-Israel piece. Disgusting but, sadly, not surprising.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
03 November '16..

The issue of water rights and claims that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are going thirsty, are repeatedly used as a stick with which to beat Israel. But these claims are also more often than not false. The latest is a story from Reuters headlined: “As water dries up, West Bank village thirsts for a less precarious supply.”

A mountainous Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Al Jab’a differs in many ways from surrounding Israeli settlements but it shares one worry with its neighbors – a shortage of water. …

Residents of Al Jab’a, who once had to walk for hours daily to fetch water, do have limited access to Israeli water supplies in their concrete homes due to a reservoir, pipeline and a pump built in 2013 by an Italian non-governmental organization.

But the water provided is not enough, according to families in Al Jab’a, a village of about 150 houses 12 km (7 miles) southwest of Bethlehem. They also fear their system could be demolished as it was not officially approved.

The story continues with alleged restrictions on the village’s water supply:

But numerous rural and Bedouin communities in the West Bank are not connected to a network run by Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, which is responsible for supplying water to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.

Except that Mekorot is not responsible for supplying Palestinians with water. This is the responsibility of the Palestinian Water Authority. As NGO Monitor points out, water issues are dictated by the mutually agreed 1995 Oslo II Interim Agreement:

(Continue to Full Story)

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