water

The water situation in Palestine appears to be quite complex according to its highlighted importance with in such an arid area. As presented in this report by Amnesty...

however, the real situation is fundamentally very simple..
there is not enough of it.

Palestine had it and now Israel has taken it.. leaving an awful situation for those people living wihtin the west bank and gaza.

My first experience of the troubles associated with water was when we ran out of water in the house in Madama, Nablus District, where we were staying for the duration of the olive harvest.

Fawsi and Ali came to our rescue and helped us move the water from the well to the water tank.
Before this point i was not aware that we had a well. I thought that the water was delivered by a large tanker which seemed to be tearing around the streets of the village some mornings when we ambled down the main road to Burin for picking.

The rain water collects in the well throughout the year, and this is used by the families living in the premises (currently us). when this water runs out, water is purchased from the large tanker, and is quite expensive to buy, so families are careful with how they use water.

Some families however, do not have a well. And they cannot afford to buy water. So they depend on a spring from the hillside to provide them with the water they need, which had worked out fine until the beginning of construction of the settlement Y'Itzar in the late 80's.

the settlers have decided to use the spring as a form of waste disposal. they dispose of rubbish and human sewage into the stream of water, resulting in contamination. This means many families and children of the village of Madama have chronic dystentry.

this has been recognised as a problem and an application was put forward to Oxfam to help with the issue. Oxfam put together a project to cover the open pipes down to the village so contamination would not longer be possible. The project itself was riddled with problems- gaining permission from the army, the employment of Palestinian workers and the aggression of the settlers which ended in gunshot wounds.

It amazed me that the headteacher of the local boys school, who was involved in the project for Oxfam, claimed that it was not the settlers aggression, the army incursion at night, the destruction of the olive harvest that was the main problem for the village...

it was the water.


A verson of the Oxfam report can be found here

Article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights:

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability.