The “Israel is stealing Palestinian water” canard

Just this summer, this trope made its way into a publication designed to demonize Israel.

It was the hottest week of the year. All Fadel Jaber wanted was some water for his family. But Fadel lives in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli government has redirected water pipes to provide swimming pools for Jewish settlers and empty faucets for Palestinians like Fadel.

This canard is repeated over and over again. Martin Sherman wrote to me to advise that two years ago:

I confronted him (peter Beinart) at UCLA and explained that – at best – he was distorting the incident. He nevertheless ignored the facts and published his book which begins with the his original misleading description to show how much of a lie it is.

And he included this letter.

To: Chaim Seidler-Feller <rabbichaim@uclahillel.org>
Cc: Peter Beinart <Beinart@newamerica.net>

Chaim

First let me commend you on a smoothly organized UCLA Hillel event featuring Peter Beinart last week .  However in light of the issues raised in the talk I feel compelled to respond – and I apologize for the somewhat delayed response as I have been traveling and have had a backlog to catch up on.

In his talk Beinart took up the theme of his 2010 New York Times Review of Booksarticle in which he chides US Jewry for its almost “Pavlovian”-like support of Israel  and for overlooking many alleged Israeli violations of the principles of liberal governance.

As an Israeli, I take issue with virtually all the points raised by Beinart – either with regard to their factual veracity or to substantive significance imputed to them, or to both.

Particularly blatant in this regard was his reference to water, which as it so happens, is a field in which a have a certain amount of acknowledged expertise. (Please seeAmnesty’s Travesty   &  Water in Israel)  Accordingly I would be grateful if you could forward this email to the participants in the event – in the interests of fair and balanced presentation of the facts.

Beinart  began his address by relating an incident of a Palestinian man being apprehended – in front of his sobbing son – for attempting to “misappropriate”  water. What seemed to cause Beinart to be appalled by the arrest rather than the by attempted theft, was his contention that that Israelis consume 4 times more water than Palestinians – which  he saw a manifestation of  Israel’s illiberal discriminatory malevolence vis-a- vis the Palestinians with regard to water allocation.

Now while Beinart’s claim is roughly true empirically, it totally meaningless as a indication of malicious intent or of purposeful deprivation in Israel’s water policy.. At best the figure is irrelevant; at worst, misleading

For while it is true that the per capita consumption of the Israeli population is much higher than that of the Palestinian population, this is principally a result of differences in demand–rather than in supply – due to the differing lifestyles in the two societies . Similarly different rates of consumption occur between the Jewish and Arab populations within pre-1967 Israel—and between different socio-economic groups within the Jewish population—without anyone raising the claim that this is the result of purposeful deprivation

Indeed, one would expect similar – indeed perhaps larger differentials between the water usage of the residents of downtown LA and those of BelAir/Brentwood, without anyone imagining that this was the result of ethnic-driven discrimination in allocation

While it is always possible to find isolated anecdotal incidents where Israeli actions may be “inappropriate” or “disproportionate”, this in no way a reflection of Israel’s overall water policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Quite the opposite is true

By every conceivable measure of consumption of fresh water, the Palestinians’ situation improved dramatically – indeed beyond all recognition – since 1967 under Israeli administration:

• overall consumption;
• per capita consumption;
• consumption relative to Israel/Israelis,
• conveyance of running water to households;
• net conveyance to Palestinians from pre-67 Israel;
•  area under agricultural cultivation;
• size of the agricultural product 

Note this is not merely stating that the Palestinians are better off under Israel than they would have been under Jordan, as Beinart seemed to assert in his response to my remark. Indeed, the rate of Palestinian per capita consumption of fresh water hasincreased more rapidly than that of Israelis since 1967

In the period 1967-2006 the overall annual consumption of the Palestinians in the “West Bank” grew by 300 percent – from 60 Mcm, (million cubic meters) 180 Mcm. Theannual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15% – from 86 cu.m. to 100 cu.m. By contrast the overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1411 Mcm. to 1211 Mcm.), while the per capita consumption plummeted almost 70% (!)  from 508 cu.m. to 170 cu.m. – a decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for agricultural irrigation and of naturally occurring water by artificially produced (desalinated) water for domestic use. The Palestinians, by contrast, have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed upon sewage purification plants, allowing untreated effluents to endanger “downstream” Israeli supplies.

As for the much-maligned “settlements”, the total water consumption of the Jewish settlements on the “West Bank” is 48.3 Mcm,  while the Israel Water Utility, Mekorot, conveys 55.7 Mcm from National Water System inside the pre- 67 frontiers to the “West Bank”.  Accordingly, Israel conveys more water from inside the pre-67 Green Line to the West Bank than the total consumption of the Jewish settlements. There is thus a net conveyance of water from Israel to the Palestinians that more than compensates for the “settlers” widely denigrated “swimming pools and lawns”

Moreover it is important to underscore that since the signature of the Oslo II Agreement (Annex III, Article40 Clause 4), Israel is no longer responsible for supplying Palestinians end-consumers with water. Indeed, Israel transferred all powers and responsibilities in the sphere of water and sewage in the West Bank, which relate solely to the Palestinian population, to the Palestinian Authority(PA), which in turn assumed these powers and responsibilities. Since the responsibility (officially and in practice) for the water supply to the Palestinian households is fully under the Palestinian Water Authority, the claims of inefficient or  insufficient water supply should be directed at the Palestinian Authority. Typically stoppages are due to theft, poor infrastructure maintenance, or unpaid bills– a feature which even the wildly biased 2009 Amnesty report is forced to grudgingly acknowledge. (see again Amnesty’s Travesty)

Finally a reference to the fate of Palestinian agriculture under cruel pre-Oslo Israeli occupation up to the signature of the Oslo Accords – from Daniel Hillel, Rivers of Eden:(Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 206

 “The Israeli occupation changed local agriculture profoundly. It introduced modern technology, including mechanization, precision tillage, pest control, plastic covering of crops for temperature control, high yielding varieties, postharvest processing of produce, marketing, and export outlets. It also introduced efficient methods of irrigation, including sprinkler and especially drip irrigation. Consequently, output increased greatly, and farming was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.” 

Perhaps then the real failure of the American Jewish Establishment is that it has not seen to it that facts such as these are widely known, thus allowing  ignorance and/or malice to dominate the discourse??