Thirty years after the historic Oslo Accords, Palestinian hopes for statehood seem more distant than ever and popular frustration is omnipresent, particularly regarding access to water.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over land but also over the water resources that support life on the barren lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Hopes for peace were high when then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, as U.S. President Bill Clinton looked on.
The historic deal they reached created a limited degree of Palestinian autonomy and was intended as a first step toward resolving the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
For many, the ultimate goal was the creation of a Palestinian state whose people would one day live freely and peacefully alongside Israel.
Instead, three decades later, Israeli settlements have mushroomed in the occupied West Bank, deadly violence has erupted, and the blockaded Gaza Strip is littered with the ruins of several wars.
For Palestinian farmer Bassam Dudin, the most immediate concern is that he has no longer been able to draw water from his wells since Israeli forces arrived in July and poured cement into them.
“They didn’t warn me in advance,” said Dudin, 47, standing among sun-scorched vegetables in his field in the village of Al-Hijra, in the southern Hebron region, in West Bank.
“We are living in a very, very difficult situation.”
Israeli military authorities argued that Dudin, who holds land title dating back to the era of Ottoman rule over historic Palestine, had illegally exploited groundwater.
The Palestinian territories’ civil affairs body, COGAT, said the wells were “drilled in violation of the construction agreement, harmed natural water sources and posed a risk of contamination of the aquifer.” “.
– ‘Mickey Mouse Forum’ –
The 1993 peace effort aimed to guarantee Israelis and Palestinians equitable access to water from the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee and the mountain and coastal aquifers that lie beneath the divided lands.
But today, Palestinians complain of unequal access to clean water, even though Israel has a world-class system with vast underground tunnels and pipelines, coastal desalination plants, high-use efficient water and wastewater recycling.
Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War, now controls its water infrastructure through the national water company Mekorot.
The Israeli company also supplies 22 percent of the water used by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to Palestinian data.
Dudin is not allowed to dig for water on his land without permission, under rules cemented by the 1990s Oslo Accords and follow-up agreements.
His farm is located in the 60 percent of the West Bank that has been declared “Area C” and placed under the control of the Israeli army. (Area A is administered by the Palestinians and Area B is under mixed Israeli and Palestinian control.)
Residents of Area C must apply for Israeli permits for all construction, including wells, but in practice these are almost impossible to obtain.
This is despite the creation of a Joint Water Committee within the framework of the Agreements.
Former Palestinian water negotiator Shaddad Attili ridiculed the committee as a “Mickey Mouse forum” in which, he said, Israel often rejects projects or blocks them for years.
“Every time we say no to an Israeli project, they implement it anyway, because they have the power,” he accused.
The Israel Water Authority declined to be interviewed and directed AFP to COGAT, which also declined repeated requests to discuss the matter.
– Dusty water pipes –
Rows of date palms and banana trees surround vegetable fields near the West Bank city of Jericho in the verdant Jordan Valley, considered the breadbasket of the Palestinians.
The birdsong is interrupted by the occasional roar of Israeli warplanes above the area from which, as well as parts of the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces were supposed to withdraw under the Oslo Accords .
But in many villages in the Jericho region too, water scarcity is a pressing problem, the result of what residents describe as an unfair distribution of resources.
Looking at his dusty water pipes, farmer Diab Attiyyat said his farmland in Israeli-controlled Area C receives water only once a week, pumped from the Al-Auja spring, located a few kilometers away.
Attiyat uses drip irrigation to use water sparingly.
“The situation is really miserable,” said the 42-year-old, who is supported by the United Nations World Food Program.
“You live in difficulty and stagnation. Sometimes the Al-Auja spring is operational and sometimes it is cut off.”
In the Palestinian-controlled city of Jericho, part of Area A, water is abundant. The springs feed several water parks and the sumptuous villas have private swimming pools.
But Attili, the former negotiator, said the costs of pumping water, even to neighboring communities, and the difficulty of obtaining permits, make equitable distribution of water impossible.
Daily water consumption around Jericho is around 183 liters per person, more than double the average of 86 liters elsewhere in the Palestinian territories, excluding annexed East Jerusalem, according to 2021 data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Attiyyat, the farmer, is also upset: “It bothers me when I see others wasting water.”
– “Unfit for human consumption” –
Water shortage is not a problem in the Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, spokesman Josh Hasten said.
Settlements in Gush Etzion, like others in the West Bank, are considered illegal under international law and have expanded massively since the 1990s.
Excluding East Jerusalem, the occupied territory is now home to around 490,000 Israeli settlers.
Hasten praised massive investments in seawater desalination, which now provides 63 percent of Israel’s domestic consumption, as well as other “advances and improvements.”
He called the Oslo Accords “a total disaster in all its forms” and accused the Palestinian Authority of mismanagement of natural resources.
The water shortage facing Palestinians is most acute in Gaza, the crowded and impoverished coastal enclave blocked by Israel and home to around 2.3 million people.
Past wars and restrictions on imports of construction materials, parts and fuel have devastated much of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, causing a public health crisis.
“Gaza’s water is not fit for human consumption,” said water plant technician Zain al-Abadeen, who blamed the high salinity on seawater intrusion into the water. the depleted aquifer.
In some neighborhoods, children bring plastic bottles to free drinking water stations run by charities, while wealthier residents pay private companies to deliver water by truck.
EcoPeace’s Gidon Bromberg says it’s ‘crazy’ that water issue is still linked to broader Israeli-Palestinian peace deal
EU-funded plants now meet around 40 percent of the domestic needs of Gaza’s population, according to the coastal municipalities’ water department, but Abadeen said their expansion was urgently needed.
Access to clean water is a fundamental human right and the issue must be delinked from politics, activists say.
Nada Majdalani, Palestinian director of the EcoPeace group, said that three decades after the Oslo Accords, “there is a need for a holistic water resources management mechanism that would meet all needs.”
His Israeli counterpart Gidon Bromberg said it was “madness” that the water issue was still linked to a broader peace deal.
“We need the political will of both governments, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to recognize that the underlying logic no longer holds water,” he said.
