The Dirty Politics of Water in the MidEast

The Devastating Truth about Water and Palestinian Statehood -Yochanan Visser & Sharon Shaked

The Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

44 joint Israeli-Palestinian Water Commission-approved projects, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant in Jenin that received approval in 2008, have not been implemented.

The German government even withdrew a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) could not handle the project.

The PWA did not implement projects in the Eastern aquifer that would have solved much of the Palestinian water crisis. More than half of the wells approved for exploitation of the Eastern aquifer have still not been drilled.

The Palestinian Authority neglects the basic needs of its citizens and cynically uses water as a weapon in a PR campaign against Israel.

The stubborn refusal to work with Israel on mutual interests like improvement of the water infrastructure, and the way the PA subsequently uses that lack of improvement to demonize Israel, prove that the PA is not interested in the two-state solution, or peace.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Palestinians Water Supply -Sharon Udasin & Lahav Harkov

The Palestinians currently have much more access to water than in any country in the Arab world except Lebanon, Israel's Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan said in an interview.

Israel supplies the Palestinians with 80% more fresh water every year than what was required in the Oslo Accords, and if the Palestinians would recycle their sewage water as Israel does with most of its own, the Palestinian water supply would be even greater. "We told Palestinians we are willing to give them all the knowledge, but they insist on using fresh water and sending us sewage," Erdan said.
(Jerusalem Post)
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