Shragai - Palestinian water theft is tapping Israel dry

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
15 February '12..



Palestinian theft of water in Judea and Samaria has reached nightmare proportions. Every year, 10 million cubic meters of water are stolen from the mountain aquifer under Israeli control, while drilling permits for Palestinians allow for much less. As if that wasn’t enough, just a fraction of the sewage generated by the Palestinians is properly treated, causing considerable damage to the environment.

On a cloudy night a few months ago, shortly after the residents of a number of Arab villages and Israeli settlements in the Hebron Hills region discovered that their faucets had run dry, the Israel Defense Forces descended on the Mekorot water pipe, which runs from Beit Gobrin to Hebron. It was assumed that the disappearing water was caused by illegal Palestinian re-routing and diverting of water from dozens of illegally drilled holes in the main pipeline. Yet, when IDF troops arrived on the scene that night to investigate, what they discovered was hundreds, not dozens, of re-routing points.

The pipes which the Palestinians plugged into the main conduit provided water to pirate irrigation pools which served as makeshift reservoirs of stolen water. The Palestinians used these reservoirs for agricultural needs. Fortunately, the IDF destroyed these reservoirs. Likewise, similar incidents have been reported on the Shiloh-Migdalim pipeline as well as in other areas. The IDF troops came away surprised at the number of illegal holes drilled for purposes of re-routing stolen water. Every year, 3.5 million cubic meters of water in Judea and Samaria are stolen in this fashion.

Dozens of irrigation pools have now been torn down. Dozens of kilometers of illegal piping have been confiscated. This is an endless Sisyphean war, but, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg.

A new study by Professor Haim Gvirtzman, who heads Hebrew University’s Hydrology Studies Program, and whose report was published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, reveals that Israel loses some 10 million cubic meters of water per year as a result of state-sanctioned theft. In broad daylight, Palestinians illegally drill in hundreds of spots without receiving the necessary permits from the joint Israel-Palestinian Authority committee that handles water issues., Either Ramallah willfully ignores these incidents or expresses its approval. Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game.. When Israel shuts down one drilling site, unfortunately, another pops up.

Marquardt-Bigman - The water libel

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
20 January '12..

A recently released official French report that blames Israeli “apartheid” water policies for Palestinian water problems was angrily rejected by Israel, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman noted that the “systematic evading of simple facts that are available for verification within the field indicate the blatant bias of the author.” But the French report was (unsurprisingly) not the first one to falsely accuse Israel of depriving the Palestinians of water that is rightfully theirs.

In October 2009, Amnesty International made similar charges in a report that was poetically entitled “Troubled Waters.” Israel responded to the allegations by pointing out that the Amnesty report “ignore[d] Israeli data, papers and reports, although they contain verifiable facts presented with total transparency. This questionable approach, which consists in systematically disregarding Israeli material while relying exclusively on Palestinian allegations, raises doubts as to the real intentions of the report’s authors and of the organization itself.” The Water Authority also provided a detailed response refuting Amnesty’s claims.

By now, there is also a new study by Professor Haim Gvirtzman, a hydrologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University, who highlighted how ridiculous the charge of “apartheid” was by pointing out that since 1967, Israel had connected more than 700 Palestinian villages to running water. Or, to quote the statement by Israel’s Water Authority:

Visser/Shaked - The devastating truth about water and Palestinian statehood

The owner of the local Snow bar,
swimming in his pool in the hills of
Ramallah: quite a decent place

Yochanan Visser/Sharon Shaked
JPost Opinion
28 August '11

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=235772

Documents prove PA claims are all wet.

On June 15, 2011 The Jerusalem Post published an article about the Palestinian water crisis, written by the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, Dr. Shaddad Atilli.

In his article, Atilli wrote that Israel’s ‘discriminatory policies’ are to blame for the lack of water in Palestinian society. He claimed that Israel uses the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC) to veto and delay Palestinian water projects. He also wrote that Israel illegally exploits 90% of the shared water sources.

Furthermore, he claimed that because of the Israeli theft of water and the destruction of water wells and treatment plants, people realize that the two-state solution is rapidly fading. His libelous article, full of distortions, outright lies and false accusations, was yet another proof of the PA’s intransigence.

Recently our organization, Missing Peace, obtained authentic papers documenting meetings of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), and correspondence between Colonel Avi Shalev, head of the International relations branch of COGAT, and Dr.Atilli. These documents paint an entirely different picture.

Contrary to Atilli’s outrageous accusations, the Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

Let’s examine some of the claims in Atilli’s article and compare them with the picture that emerges from the JWC and COGAT documents.

‘Israel delayed and vetoed Palestinian water projects,’ says Atilli.

First of all, article 40 (14) in the Oslo Accords clearly states that all JWC decisions about water projects in the West Bank need mutual agreement. Once approved, JWC projects for the territories under Palestinian control (Areas A and B) do not need any further Israeli involvement. Projects in Area C, where Israel is in control, need approval from the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA).

Since 2000 the PWA submitted 76 requests for permits to the office of the Civil Administration. Subsequently 73 permits were issued by ICA and three denied because there was no master plan.

In a letter of June 8 2009, Shalev responded to Atilli’s complaint that ICA did not honor a PWA request to issue 12 of these permits. Shalev wrote that these permits had already been issued in 2001, and that ICA wondered why the PWA did not execute these projects.

Another 44 JWC-approved projects, the majority in Areas A and B, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in Jenin that received approval in 2008 - have not been implemented. The German government even withdraw a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the PWA could not handle the project. When, back in November 2009, the PWA complained about a lack of funds, the Israeli government offered to finance water projects for Palestinian communities. The PA has yet to respond to this offer.