TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Israeli government officials are strongly disputing a new Amnesty International (Amnesty) report which has accused Israel of denying sufficient water resources to the Palestinian territories, according to news outlets in Israel.
The Jerusalem Post on October 27 quoted a statement from Israel’s Foreign Ministry saying that Israel has “extensively surpassed” its obligations to provide water to the Palestinians. In the statement, Israel said the Palestinians “have significantly violated their commitments under the water agreement” by neglecting to construct sewage treatment plants despite the availability of foreign funding for them, and by the drilling of 250 illegal wells without authorization from the Joint Water Commission.
Also, offers by Israel to supply Palestinian areas with desalinated water have been rejected by Palestinians “due to political concerns,” the newspaper quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.
The Israeli government said in the statement that it had supplied the Palestinians twice as much as the 23.6 million cubic meters (6.2 billion gallons) of water per year that was required under a 1995 Oslo Accords agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the state of Israel.
Israel’s Water Authority challenged the accuracy of figures contained in the Amnesty report, the Jerusalem Post article said. Among those figures was Amnesty’s assertion that Palestinian daily water consumption is 70 liters (18 gallons) per person while Israel’s consumption is more than 300 liters (79 gallons) per person.
The Water Authority says the true daily consumption figures are 287 liters (76 gallons) per person for Palestinians and 408 liters (108 gallons) per person for Israelis. “The authority stressed that [the difference between these two amounts] was nowhere near as drastic as Amnesty had portrayed it,” the article said.
“The Amnesty report is selective and incorrect, to make an understatement,” the Israel National News quoted Israel Water Authority spokesman Uri Shore saying. The Water Authority also said it never had a chance to present its side of the issue to Amnesty researchers or react to their findings.
The Amnesty report, as outlined October 27 by WaterTech Online®, said that restrictions by the Israelis on Palestinians’ access to water over the past 40 years have prevented development of a Palestinian water infrastructure adequate to meet people’s needs; it urged Israel to allow Palestinians a “fair share” of shared water resources.
Shore countered that the amount of water available to Palestinian Authority Arabs has increased by 22 percent per person since the 1967 Six-Day War, while that available to Israelis in the same period has gone down by 70 percent.
The allocation of water resources among Israel, the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, and neighboring areas is expected to be a key issue that must be settled in any final Middle East peace settlement. The Obama administration is attempting to restart stalled talks that would be aimed at reaching such an agreement.
To read the full Jerusalem Post story, click here.
To read the full Israel National News story, click here.
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