Watering the desert
The desert cannot be made to blossom like the rose.
It is not feasible.
The Sabra know this,
the Palestine-born Jews,
named after the desert cactus,
thorny, tough, in tune with the desert.
Immigrant Jews from Europe and Russia do not know this.
Their settlements are green with water sprinklers,
their gardens blue with swimming pools.
Meanwhile, outside the settler fences and the deserted highways upon which no native Palestinian may travel,
the people grow ever thirstier, as their water is taken from them to irrigate this impossible dream.
Water is the most valuable resource in the Middle East,
more valuable than oil.
There has already been one war for the possession of water.
In 1967, Israel cried that it was being attacked,
and it seized the water table of the Golan Heights from Syria
and the headwaters of the Jordan river.
All waters in Palestine were taken over by the Israeli state.
Wells were destroyed,
and new Israeli deep wells were sunk, so the wells of the indigenous people dried up.
Over one hundred and forty Palestinian pumping stations were either destroyed or confiscated.
Many Palestinian farmers have had to abandon their fields because they have no water to irrigate them.
Now forty per cent of Israel's water needs is taken from the West Bank.
Two hundred thousand Palestinian villagers are not connected to the water network
and have to rely on rainfall, springs and deliveries from water tankers.
According to the World Health Organisation,
every person needs to consume one hundred litres of water a day.
Currently, Palestinians consume about fifty to seventy litres a day
(some as little as nineteen litres).
Israel consumes three hundred and fifty litres per person per day,
much of it taken from the West Bank.
Because of Israeli deep wells, water in Gaza and the Jordan valley is getting saltier.
Springs and shallow wells are drying up,
especially in Bardata and Jenin.
Flow of the Jordan has dropped by ninety per cent,
so the Dead Sea is drying up
In 1999 it was estimated that if Israel compensated Palestine for the damage it has caused to the water resources,
it would cost the Israeli state forty-five billion dollars.
According to international law, the waters of Palestine belong to Palestine.
The Hague convention of 1910 and the Geneva Convention of 1949 state that an occupying power must safeguard the natural resources of captured territory and provide for the needs of indigenous peoples.
The Israelis deny the applicability of these conventions, since they say Palestine is not a state.
In December 1972, the UN General Assembly resolved that Palestinians in the occupied territories had the right to full access to the resources of their territory.
These resolutions have been ignored.
As a result, irreversible damage to the entire water system is taking place.
This is affecting Palestinians now.
But it cannot be long before it affects Israel also,
and the water sprinklers have to be turned off
and the swimming pools emptied.
If the situation is not remedied before then,
it will be too late to prevent a terrible ecological disaster,
with Israelis, Palestinians, and everyone else in the Middle East dying of thirst.
The dream of making the desert bloom like the rose will have become a nightmare.
Jerusalem, August 22, 2004
