Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of forcing the Palestinians to live in a “chronic state of water scarcity”, which prompted the World Bank to conduct research into the water issue from September 2008 to February 2009. While the report was dressed up in polite diplomatic language like “because of asymmetries in power, capacity and information between parties…” it spread the blame between the two, saying that Israeli policies along with mismanagement of resources by the Palestinian Authority have led to the current water crisis.
But that may not be entirely fair to the Palestinian side. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has reported that in practice it is basically impossible for Palestinians to get the required permits from Israeli officials to do things to gain access to water like drill a new well. This has forced many Palestinians to either make illegal, unregulated connections to the existing water system (compounding the problem of the system being overstretched), or to just go without. It’s not really surprising then that Israel’s water use is four times Palestine’s.
Abbas wants water rights to be part of any comprehensive ‘two-state’ peace deal between Israel and Palestine. That’s not likely to happen though. Water supposedly was one of the issues that derailed President Clinton’s attempts at brokering a peace deal at the end of his second term. Israel relies heavily on the aquifer beneath Palestine for much of their water needs, many of their West Bank ‘settlements’ get all of their water from the West Bank aquifer, so its hard to imagine Israel just giving up access to this much-needed pool.
The World Bank report concludes that new rules governing water usage are required just to meet the basic needs of the Palestinian people.
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