Yet Another Way Israel Harms Palestinians

“The Notre Dame-Global Adaption Initiative (ND-GAIN) Country Index, which is part of the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative, summarizes a country’s vulnerability to climate change as well as its “readiness” to improve resilience. The ND-GAIN ranks Israel as the 29th least vulnerable and the 32nd most resilient country to tackle climate change in the world. Meanwhile, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are not included in this index and are sidelined in most discussions on climate change altogether, even though they face a dual challenge. Not only are the OPT directly threatened by climate change, but the Israeli occupation prevents the Territories from adapting to it.”

Israel’s problematic role in perpetuating water insecurity for Palestine

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Alliance banner designed by Paul Normandia of Red Sun Press.

How Israel uses Water as a Weapon against Palestinians. The Alliance's Fact

While Israel is regarded as a world leader in water management, technology, and efficiency (it is ranked as the 32nd most resilient country in the world to tackle climate change)—Israel deliberately deprives Palestinians of those resources.

Despite living in the same geographical territory, Palestinians are already suffering the effects of climate change more severely than Israelis, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Drip-irrigation, water recycling, and the desalination of seawater is increasing the quality and quantity of water available to Israelis in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have some of the lowest per capita water availability in the world: only 50% of households in the West Bank and 30% in the Gaza Strip have daily access to water.

Source for fact

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Mohammad Nimnim wheels water jugs, to fill at the mosque at Beach refugee camp. (Photo: Abdel Kareem Hanna)

A Poem

Sometimes There is a Day

Sometimes there is a day you just want

to get so far away from.

Feel it shrink inside you like an island,

as if you were on a boat.

Then, maybe no more fighting

about land. I want that day to feel

as if it never happened, when Ahmad was burned,

when people were killed, when my cousin was shot.

The day someone went to jail

is not a day that shines.

I want to have a clear mind again, as a baby who stares at the light

wisping through the window and thinks,

That’s mine.

By Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab

From The Tiny Journalist a book of poems

Juan Cole on Gaza's Water Crisis

“Bad water accounts for one in four people who fall ill in the Strip, and given that wastewater is going into the aquifer, the major source of drinking water, the authors warn that major disease outbreaks are imminent and should be prepared for.”

Israeli Blockade of Gaza Causing Contaminated Water, 25% of Illnesses and 12% of Infant Deaths