{"id":251486,"date":"2016-06-23T05:10:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T05:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/palestines-prayer-for-rain-how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war\/"},"modified":"2016-06-23T05:10:41","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T05:10:41","slug":"palestines-prayer-for-rain-how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/palestines-prayer-for-rain-how-israel-uses-water-as-a-weapon-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestine\u2019s \u2018Prayer for Rain\u2019: How Israel Uses Water as a Weapon of War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have
\n had their water supply reduced almost by half.<\/p>\n

This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel\u2019s national
\n water company, \u201cMekorot\u201d, decided to cut off \u2013 or significantly reduce \u2013 its
\n water supply to Jenin, Salfit, and many villages around Nablus, among other
\n regions.<\/p>\n

Israel has been \u201cwaging a water war\u201d against Palestinians, according
\n to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah<\/a>. The irony is that
\n the water provided by \u201cMekorot\u201d is actually Palestinian water, usurped from
\n West Bank aquifers. While Israelis, including illegal West Bank settlements,
\n use the vast majority of it, Palestinians are sold their own water back at high
\n prices.<\/p>\n

By shutting down the water supply at a time that Israeli
\n officials are planning to export<\/a> essentially Palestinian water, Israel is
\n once more utilizing water as a form of collective punishment.<\/p>\n

This is hardly new. I still remember the trepidation in my parents\u2019 voices
\n whenever they feared that the water supply was reaching a dangerously low level.
\n It was almost a daily discussion at home.<\/p>\n

Whenever clashes erupted between stone-throwing children and Israeli occupation
\n forces on the outskirts of the refugee camp, we always, instinctively, rushed
\n to fill up the few water buckets and bottles we had scattered around the house.<\/p>\n

This was the case during the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which
\n erupted in 1987 throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories.<\/p>\n

Whenever clashes erupted, one of the initial actions carried out by the Israeli
\n Civil Administration \u2013 a less ominous title for the offices of the Israeli occupation
\n army \u2013 was to collectively punish the whole population of whichever refugee
\n camp rose up in rebellion.<\/p>\n

The steps the Israeli army took became redundant, although grew more vengeful
\n with time: a strict military curfew (meaning the shutting down of the entire
\n area and the confinement of all residents to their homes under the threat of
\n death); cutting off electricity and shutting off the water supply.<\/p>\n

Of course, these steps were taken only in the first stage of the collective
\n punishment, which lasted for days or weeks, sometimes even months, pushing some
\n refugee camps to the point of starvation.<\/p>\n

Since there was little the refugees could do to challenge the authority of
\n a well-equipped army, they invested whatever meager resources or time that they
\n had to plot their survival.<\/p>\n

Thus, the obsession over water, because once the water supply ran out, there
\n was nothing to be done; except, of course, that of Salat Al-Istisqa or the \u201cPrayer
\n for Rain\u201d that devout Muslims invoke during times of drought. The elders in
\n the camp insist that it actually works, and reference miraculous stories from
\n the past where this special prayer…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have had their water supply reduced almost by half. This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel\u2019s national water company, \u201cMekorot\u201d, decided to cut off \u2013 or significantly reduce \u2013 its water supply to Jenin, Salfit, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-251486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}