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“After years of planning and construction, the Gaza Central Treatment Plant was put into operation on April, 28, 2021. The plant is slated to serve eleven communities with one million inhabitants.”
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Israel builds regional ‘empathy’ and ‘mutual trust’ at expense of Palestinians
The Israeli film ‘Sustainable Nation’ is an Earth Day special. Produced in 2019 by OpenDor Media and the Jewish National Fund, it shows Israeli water innovators at work from California to Africa to Asia saving an increasingly parched world.
Of course, Israel’s theft of water from increasingly parched Palestinians is not allowed to intrude on this story of Israeli water innovators who are, in the words of the film’s director Micah Smith, “incredible role models for how individuals around the world can have an impact.”
This year’s Earth Day has a new twist. Israel’s water innovators do not have to go far afield to offer their “home grown” water solutions.
Instead, thanks to the Abraham Accords, Israel and other Middle Eastern countries – especially the UAE – now have the opportunity “to offer first-rate added value to normalization and relations between peoples, while calling for action to preserve the most precious natural resource in our region: water. Water gives life. This natural resource has what it takes to unite our people, by creating empathy and building mutual trust.”
The writer is Noam Bedein, director of the Sderot Media Center and founder of the Dead Sea Revival Project who is also billed as “an international speaker” on water sustainability.
The language of his Times of Israel Earth Day blog is wholeheartedly positive. Who could be against “creating empathy and building mutual trust”? Such qualities have been sorely lacking in a country where “Death to Arabs!” is both a football chant and omnipresent graffiti.
But something is totally missing from this optimistic scenario – the Palestinian presence. By airbrushing them out of the picture, Bedein makes them seem entirely irrelevant to an unfolding vista of regional harmony and prosperity.
Palestinians are not permitted to intrude on this “new Middle Eastern regional alliance, initially formed internally through an exchange of education and culture, and then externally by promoting regional and innovative environmental tourism for domestic and foreign visitors.” There is money to be made from an emerging ecotourism market in which the UAE and Israel - both “global leaders in water sustainability” - can take the lead.
A Times of Israel blog by Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the US and to the UN, takes a similarly rosy view.
The Abraham Accords and climate change have, he writes, turned the threat of a regional war over increasingly scarce water resources into “a solid opportunity for peace,” as countries “put aside their hostility towards Israel and work with us to combat this shared challenge.” Thanks to the Accords, “industrious and forward-thinking Gulf investors” are seeking connections “with Israel’s best Greentech innovators.”
Having pumped parts of the West Bank nearly dry, Israel is poised to woo the region with “examples of the incredible innovative and technological green solutions Israel has developed to address its own scarce water supply and dire agricultural needs” and is “eager and willing to work with and share our expertise with any country that needs help.”
The Palestinians do at least get a brief mention in the ambassador’s blog. He writes that the region’s water crisis could “draw Palestinian leaders into a peace process they have long resisted.” But this seems more of an afterthought than an objective to be strenuously pursued.
What Israel clearly does not want to do is hand over its control of West Bank water resources to the Palestinians, which would be on the table in any ‘peace process’ worth the name.
Nancy Murray
Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
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With 53% fully vaccinated, Israel as of April 18th no longer requires masks to be worn outdoors and schools are open. It was reported that 700,000 doses of vaccines meant for Israel have been held up because Pfizer “is fed up with sending Israel vaccines without being paid for them, especially when the entire world is waiting for its vaccine.” Among those still waiting are Palestinians. Mondoweiss reports that by April 16, there were 306,961 total Covid cases in Palestine and 3,223 deaths, with cases doubling in the Gaza Strip – now under lockdown - in the first week of April. On April 18, the number of deaths in the Gaza Strip, which has only 120 ICU beds, peaked at 23 in 24 hours, as cases there exceeded 90,000. Palestinian Health Ministry statistics show that as of April 14, some 3% of the population, or 153,911 Palestinians (under 35,000 in Gaza), had received the vaccine, and of that number 19,940 had been given the 2nd dose. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 272,440 doses had arrived in the West Bank and Gaza by the end of March and another 168,000 doses from COVAX were in the pipeline with an uncertain delivery date.
Because Netanyahu had the most endorsements, President Reuven Rivlin on April 6th gave him 28 days to try to patch together a coalition government. The president admitted it was “not an easy decision” because Netanyahu faces an ongoing criminal trial. As anti-Netanyahu protests resumed on the street, Netanyahu is seeking to overcome the refusal of the far-right Religious Zionist party to join a coalition that includes Mansour Abbas’ Islamist Ra’am party (United Arab List). Meanwhile the Knesset with its newly-elected members got off to an ugly start. On April 7, Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the Religious Zionist Party, threatened to expel Arab Members and “make sure” they didn’t remain in Israel if they didn’t recognize the land belongs to the Jews. Joint List head Ahmed Tibi responded by calling him “a racist” in German. The next day, Tibi walked out of a Holocaust Remembrance Day event to protest the participation of the new MK Kahanist Ben Gvir. Gvir then called Tibi a “terror supporter.”
In the wake of repeated Israeli attacks on Iranian oil tankers and warnings to the US against re-entering the deal with Iran, US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin III arrived in Israel on April 11, just in time for news of an explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. The sabotage was widely attributed to Israel. The defense secretary had no comment on the matter but White House press secretary Jen Psaki immediately said the indirect talks in Vienna to salvage the Iran nuclear deal would continue as planned. If the Biden administration was irked by Israel’s attempt to thwart US policy, you wouldn’t know it from Secretary of State Blinken’s Israeli Independence day message: “In your 73rd year of freedom, we salute Israel’s determination, bravery and ingenuity, which have made possible your country’s prosperity and hard-won security. The US commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad.” He vowed that Israel’s circle of friends would grow “even wider in the years ahead.”
On April 8, the State Department announced it was giving $150 million to UNRWA (less than half of the funding cut by Trump in 2018), $75 million to the PA for economic assistance and $10 million for ‘peacebuilding.’ This is in addition to $15 million given on March 27 for fighting the pandemic. Republicans are attempting to delay the transfer of the funds. On April 18, Mahmoud Abbas in a pre-recorded statement told J Street that the alternative to 2 states under international law was a “de facto apartheid one state solution.”
As well as continuing to arrest Hamas candidates in the West Bank, including Hasan Wardyan who has spent over 20 years in prison, Israel has been disrupting Fatah election events in East Jerusalem and detaining participants. PLO factions have issued a joint statement saying that elections will not go ahead unless East Jerusalem Palestinians can vote, while Hamas says they should not be postponed. As the rift within Fatah deepens, the Hebron homes of 2 candidates were reportedly sprayed with gunfire.
Jerusalem’s building and planning committee has approved the construction of 2,000 housing units for the Givat HaMatos settlement and 540 for Har Homa, which would block the division of Jerusalem in any future negotiations. Settlers took over 16 apartments in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood and in an April 9th demonstration to stop the takeover of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Knesset member Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the mainly Arab Joint list, was beaten by police who then reportedly kneeled on his face while he was protesting impending evictions. The start of Ramadan ratcheted up tensions when Israel announced only 10,000 vaccinated West Bankers could access the Al Aqsa mosque compound, and put up barriers around the Damascus Gate plaza. On 2 nights Israeli forces seized Iftar meals and cut the electric wires to the Al Aqsa minarets to silence the call to prayer during Israel’s Memorial Day commemoration, and on 6 nights there were clashes at Damascus Gate.
Gaza Strip hit by missiles while settlers wreak havoc on West Bank lives
During this Ramadan, Gazans are not just coping with a surging pandemic. On April 15 and again on April 16 Israeli F16s hit several sites in the Gaza Strip, which Israel called a response to the firing of 2 rockets that landed in an empty field. The Associated Press said this broke weeks of “relative cross-border calm,” ignoring the live ammunition fired by soldiers at Gazan farmers on April 7 and April 13, and Israel’s incursion into Gaza’s central district with 5 armored bulldozers on April 11 to destroy crops. Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that the IDF has prepared a plan to attack hundreds of targets in Gaza simultaneously. In the West Bank settlers burned down at least 50 olive trees in Beit Fajjar, ran over and killed a 73-year old Palestinian woman in Hebron, and attacked the Palestinian mayor of Sebastia while he was trying to prevent them from beating and abducting a child. They also beat Rabbis for Human Rights activist Arik Ascherman as he attempted to stop outpost livestock from grazing on land belonging to the village Deir Jarir. On April 13, Jonathan Pollard, who had served 30 years in prison for selling US military secrets to Israel, joined busloads of settlers who barged their way into Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, accompanied by the army.
Having deployed water as a weapon against Palestinians, Israel has recently been using it against the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, one of the driest countries in the world. A complicated water sharing arrangement concerning supplies taken by Israel from the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers as well as groundwater had been part of the October 1994 peace agreement between the two countries. In addition to some 55 million cubic meters of water annually that Israel undertakes to provide to Jordan free of charge each year, the agreement enables Jordan to purchase additional water in times of excess drought. But once relations between the countries deteriorated after the Kingdom opposed Netanyahu’s Jordan Valley annexation plans, Israel held back on sending additional water supplies that Jordan requested. It reportedly took Secretary of State Blinken’s early April phone call with the Israeli Foreign Minister to get Israel to eventually release 8 million cubic meters at $.40 per cubic meter which Jordan had asked for weeks previously.
Compiled by The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
If you missed our World Water Day webinar, you can watch it here.
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