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’s national
water company, “Mekorot”, decided to cut off – or significantly reduce – its
water supply to Jenin, Salfit, and many villages around Nablus, among other
regions.
Israel has been “waging a water war” against Palestinians, according
to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. The irony is that
the water provided by “Mekorot” is actually Palestinian water, usurped from
West Bank aquifers. While Israelis, including illegal West Bank settlements,
use the vast majority of it, Palestinians are sold their own water back at high
prices.
By shutting down the water supply at a time that Israeli
officials are planning to export essentially Palestinian water, Israel is
once more utilizing water as a form of collective punishment.
This is hardly new. I still remember the trepidation in my parents’ voices
whenever they feared that the water supply was reaching a dangerously low level.
It was almost a daily discussion at home.
Whenever clashes erupted between stone-throwing children and Israeli occupation
forces on the outskirts of the refugee camp, we always, instinctively, rushed
to fill up the few water buckets and bottles we had scattered around the house.
This was the case during the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which
erupted in 1987 throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Whenever clashes erupted, one of the initial actions carried out by the Israeli
Civil Administration – a less ominous title for the offices of the Israeli occupation
army – was to collectively punish the whole population of whichever refugee
camp rose up in rebellion.
The steps the Israeli army took became redundant, although grew more vengeful
with time: a strict military curfew (meaning the shutting down of the entire
area and the confinement of all residents to their homes under the threat of
death); cutting off electricity and shutting off the water supply.
Of course, these steps were taken only in the first stage of the collective
punishment, which lasted for days or weeks, sometimes even months, pushing some
refugee camps to the point of starvation.
Since there was little the refugees could do to challenge the authority of
a well-equipped army, they invested whatever meager resources or time that they
had to plot their survival.
Thus, the obsession over water, because once the water supply ran out, there
was nothing to be done; except, of course, that of Salat Al-Istisqa or the “Prayer
for Rain” that devout Muslims invoke during times of drought. The elders in
the camp insist that it actually works, and reference miraculous stories from
the past where this special prayer…