Aletho News

UK helps Israel steal Palestinian water

Press TV – February 10, 2012

Britain has decided to help the Israeli regime steal water from Palestinians, while even the Israeli press describe the act as a ‘water occupation.’

British Water, which represents the UK water industry supply chain, signed an agreement with Israel in December which received no media coverage. The agreement was not even published on British Water’s website. However, the Israeli regime’s embassy in London proudly reported the agreement.

This comes as Israel’s 400-mile apartheid wall illegally encloses key water supplies. The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled the apartheid wall is ‘contrary to international law’ and that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction.”

Israel’s apartheid wall is not even built along the so-called Green Line which itself is not a legal and official border. It bites deep into the occupied Palestinian West Bank and its construction is aimed at stealing Palestinians’ water and selling them their own water at an inflated price.

Palestinians have no access to the Jordan River because of the Israeli regime’s closures. Moreover, during the Gaza Massacre in 2008, Israel destroyed more than 30 kilometers of water networks and 11 water wells in a ‘deliberate and systematic’ manner, as described by a UN Fact Finding Mission.

Despite the establishment of a Joint Water Committee, which was set up to secure water supply to Palestinians, Israel was given veto power.

This way, Palestinians are forced to buy their own water, which is extracted from wells within their own land.

Although between 100 and 150 liters of water per day are necessary to meet health needs, an individual in marginalized Palestinian communities in the Occupied West Bank live on less than 20 liters of water a day. This comes as an average Israeli consumes 280 liters of Palestinians’ water each day.

Britain’s complicity with Israel in robbing the Palestinians of their water comes as even the Israeli newspaper Haaretz admitted that “some 450,000 [illegal] Israeli settlers on the [Occupied] West Bank use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians that live there.”

The newspaper even considered the situation as a ‘water occupation’ that the Israeli regime has launched against the Palestinian people.

Given the bigger picture of the establishment of the Zionist state which would not be possible without Arthur Balfour, Britain’s foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919, and the UK Trade and Investment Department’s commitment to benefit Israel such acts on the part of Britain are not unexpected.

“In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land,” said Balfour in his Balfour Declaration back in 1917.

Balfour’s comments were made as Britain had promised “the 700,000 Arabs” that had “occupied the land” independence in return for their assistance in defeating the Ottoman-German Alliance in World War I.

However, after “Turks were smitten,” as described by Stephen Ostrander, the British government gave no thought to its promise as it surrendered Palestine for the establishment of a Zionist state.

Related articles

• Stealing Palestine’s resources is illegal, despite Israeli court ruling (alethonews.wordpress.com)

February 10, 2012 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Balfour, Zionism