Essential Reading: Water as a Tool to Dominate →

If you only read one article linked to on our blog, read this one at Al Jazeera.

Since it occupied the West Bank in 1967, Israel has laid hands on Palestinian water resources through discriminatory water-sharing agreements that prevented Palestinians from maintaining or developing their water infrastructure through its illegal planning and permit regime. As a result, thousands of Palestinians are unable to access sufficient water supplies and became water-dependent on Israel.

Israel: Water as a tool to dominate Palestinians [via Al Jazeera]

News Roundup: June 2016

An important piece from Israeli journalist Amira Hass on Israel’s water wars:

Water is the only issue in which Israel (still) finds it difficult to defend its discriminatory, oppressive and destructive policy with pretexts of security and God.

Israel Incapable of Telling the Truth About Water It Steals from Palestinians [via Haaretz]

Israel intends to destroy a water-holding tank that serves 20 families of Palestinian shepherds and their flocks in the northern Jordan Valley.

Israel Plans to Destroy the Only Water Source for Shepherds in West Bank Village [via Haaretz]

Even when clinics receive new surgical instruments, these are swiftly destroyed by factors far outside the control of Gazan surgeons. This is because the water supply in Gaza is so contaminated that many clinics rely on sea water to clean surgical instruments—and ‘this just corrodes it all,’ the surgeon said.

Unexpected Details Ram Home the Scale of Gaza Crisis [via SciDev]

This UNICEF article [PDF] addresses inequitable access to water in the West Bank, as well as Gaza’s water supply, which is unfit for human consumption due to sewage, agricultural infiltration, and salt-water intrusion from the sea.

About one million West Bank Palestinians consume 60 litres of water per capita per day or less, significantly below the WHO recommendation of 10.

December 2013: Protecting children from unsafe water and inadequate sanitation [via UNICEF State of Palestine News]

Water Justice & Environmental Racism in the US

Although our focus is on water justice in Palestine, we care about water justice everywhere. In that spirit, we want to share these two articles:

Flint, Environmental Racism, & White Privilege →

We are witnessing a national catastrophe: Innocent people are fighting for their lives because officials at all levels have been derelict in their duties to protect Flint, Michigan, residents from environmental harms and have deliberately silenced community voices. Could this Flint toxic water disaster occur anywhere else? Yes, and it is, even in California, where the drought is not the only water crisis.

Water Activists, Your White Privilege Is Showing [via Truthout]

The type of environmental exploitation that the residents of Uniontown face every day is impossible to explain without taking race into account. The town’s numerous problems reflect an abject failure at every level of government to value residents’ — Black residents’ — lives and health

In This Poor, Black, Polluted Alabama Town, Speaking Up Gets You Sued [via ACLU]

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Greenwashing Israel: Water Firms in California →

This is one of the reasons we organized this website: We must raise the issue of Israel’s use of water as a weapon against Palestinians every time the country portrays itself as a pioneer in water technology and access. Israeli business journal Globes:

Seeking US money, Israeli water companies are turning to drought-stricken California. Representatives of no fewer than 26 water purification, desalinization, wastewater treatment, piping, irrigation, and other companies will travel to Los Angeles at the end of the month in an effort to slake the thirst of Californians, while making a few dollars in the process.

Israeli water tech companies to tackle California drought [via Globes]