In a report published on Tuesday, Amnesty International said Israel pursues discrimination policies in its control of water availability in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, Israel provides settlers in the occupied West Bank unlimited water supplies.
“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,” said Amnesty International Donatella Rovera
The Amnesty International report finds that Israel consumes four times more water than Palestinians. In some rural areas of the West Bank, Palestinians survive on less than 20 liters per capita a day, which is the bare minimum for an human being to survive on. At the same time, in some areas of the West Banks settlers use as much as 20 times more water per capita. The Amnesty report says that settlers enjoy swimming pools, well watered lawns and large irrigated farms. But between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank rural communities have no access to running water, while tap water in other areas often runs dry. Many Palestinian communities in the West Bank are not even connected to a water supply system, and have to rely on collecting rain water.
Israel uses more than 80 percent of the water from Mountain Aquifer while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 percent. The Mountain Aquifer is the only source of water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan river. Numbering about 450,000, Israeli settlers use more water than the Palestinian population of 2.3 million.
In the Gaza strip, the water shortage is even more dire for Palestinians. 90 percent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel doesn’t allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to the Gaza strip.
“Water is a basic need and right, but for the Palestinians obtaining even poor quality subsistence level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford. Israel must end its discriminatory policies immediately and lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources,” said Amnesty International Donatella Rovera.
Israel has already rejected the finding of Amnesty International report.
For the complete report click here.
one of the most dirtiest organisation in the world is amnesty international .
the are very good to critics israel but never arab country .
the dirty as some can be dirty one sided . like united nation .
never criticized american police or any america violation of the law or European country
no any Palestinian organisation that kill Israeli the support murder . amnesty international . pinko communist that support murder.
all the report base on fabrication and lie .
You are obviously clueless about the work of Amnesty International. They do not have a political agenda at all, the concern of Amnesty International is human rights. They are critical of Arab countries, and are at the forefront of the protest against the regime of Ahmadinejad in Iran. With your simplistic neo-con perspective, it makes perfect sense that you put, completely randomly, the UN and AI into some “Pinko communist” bag.