Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, is accusing Israel of deliberately denying Palestinians fair access to water. But the Israeli government has called Amnesty’s report “preposterous,” and says Palestinians have failed to develop their own water infrastructure. Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports on how Israeli rules make life difficult for Palestinians.
Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water
Amnesty International, Oct. 27, 2009
Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.
These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.
“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.
In a new extensive report, Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water.