No Respite for West Bank Locals

By Andrew Cockburn

National Geographic Magazine, October 2002 
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/

The latest news from the West Bank, occupied by Israel since June 1967,
differs from earlier reports only in that the situation for the vast
majority of inhabitants has grown even worse. Take, for example, one of the
most fundamental human requirements: water. The drought that has been
ravaging the entire Middle East for several years hit Israel hard, and
Palestinians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem,
have been undergoing "a severe water shortage." Two hundred thousand
Palestinians on the West Bank found themselves without any access to a
water pipeline network and therefore had to rely in part on supplies
brought in by tanker, which cost them three to five times as much as piped
water.

However, the tankers often come from areas that are under Israeli curfew
(meaning that all outside movement is forbidden.) They therefore have to
wait until the curfew is lifted before filling up and setting off to make
deliveries. The roughly 8,500 people living in the town of Bayt Furik, for
example, totally depend in water brought in from the city of Nablus, which
has been frequently under curfew for most of the day since May. The Israeli
military authorities allow tankers to enter Bayt Furik only between 8 a.m.
and 2 p.m. In consequence, each of the 13 tankers serving the town can make
only one delivery a day, as opposed to the four or five daily deliveries
that they usually made before the present disturbances, known as the Al
Aqsa intifada, began in September 2000. The effect of this severe reduction
in summer water supply on the town's beef and chicken industry has been
predictably severe, just one more reason why some 70 percent of the
inhabitants of the occupied territories are living on $2 a day or less.

Besides the curfews, Palestinians are also circumscribed by the policy of
"internal closure" that restricts travel between towns and villages and
forces people to forsake the (blockaded) road and travel the way they did
150 years ago. As the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz noted on September 4,
Palestinians are "walking by foot on dirt paths, riding donkeys or tractors
(the modern alternative to the camel) in order to fulfill basic needs like
water, a few vegetables, medicines and studies." The distances traveled are
expanding all the time. It now, on average, takes half a day to get from
Hebron to Bethlehem (about 15 miles/ 24 kilometers) and several days to get
from Jenin to Ramallah (about 40 miles/ 64 kilometers).

The occupation and intifada are wreaking an immense toll on the Israeli as
well as the Palestinian economy. The chairman of the Israeli National
Security Council recently announced that the intifada was causing the
equivalent of 2.5 - 3 billion dollars or more a year in damage to the
economy, and that Israel could not "endure the stresses imposed by its
security needs" for long.

Increasing numbers of Palestinians are also concluding they can no longer
endure the situation. While some politicians in the Israeli government have
long urged the "transfer" of the Palestinian population, this now appears
to be actually happening. According to one Palestinian official, 80,000
people, finding living conditions under the occupation unbearable, have
left the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year, a rise
of 50 percent over last year. There are reports of thousands more camped
near the Jordanian border waiting their turn to cross and join millions of
their fellow countrymen already living in embittered exile.