In response to Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine’s annual “Israel Apartheid Week,” Students for Israel are hosting “Israel Peace Week” consisting various events meant to counter Israel’s perpetually diminishing international reputation. I am simultaneously troubled and amused by the first event of the week, “Water for Peace,” in which Tami Shor of the Israel Water Authority will erroneously attempt to link Israel’s total control of water resources in the occupied territories to a peaceful resolution. In an attempt to whitewash Israel’s image, Students for Israel completely ignores the legitimacy of international law, human rights organizations and facts on the ground. To put it frankly, their attempt to reconcile Israel, water and peace is simply laughable.
Israel’s dominance over the water supply in the occupied territories is well documented by various international organizations. According to Amnesty International, Israel’s diversion of the Jordan River for its own consumption has left nearly 200,000 Palestinians without running water and other Palestinians with the harsh imposition of rationing and water outages. In an October 2010 article for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Norah Barrows-Freidman explains that while “Jewish Israelis enjoy . . . neighborhood swimming pools, unfettered access to clean drinking water, state-of-the-art sewage treatment,” Palestinians “brace and prepare each time the weather heats up and the antiquated wells dry up.” In Gaza, the situation is far worse as the result of an intense siege with almost 95 percent of the coastal aquifer being contaminated by water born diseases and access to West Bank water transfers completely prohibited. In addition, the systematic targeting of water treatment facilities during the Gaza Massacre, as described by the 2009 Goldstone Report, has left Gazians without any viable water treatment system.
Meanwhile, illegal Israeli settlers use far more water than the Palestinian population. According to Amnesty International, Israel’s citizens use four times as much as the average Palestinian or 300 liters per day per person, while some Palestinians subsist on less than 20 liters. The Apartheid Wall (Israeli West Bank barrier) further diminishes Palestinians’ access to the Jordan River and Mountain Aquifer in violation of international conventions, according to Human Rights Watch. Additionally, large quantities of garbage and chemicals have been illegally dumped in the West Bank, further contaminating some of the few underground aquifers not stolen by Israel.
It strikes me that anyone reading anything posted by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or a number of other human rights organizations would come to the same conclusion that I have: Israel’s theft of water and destruction of Palestinian capacity for water sufficiency are a continual source of instability in the region. These actions are an affront to human rights, representative of the growing apartheid regime and are far from “peaceful,” as Students for Israel has claimed. I encourage fellow students to question the symbolic use of water in Students for Israel’s campaign before picking up a water bottle in the GSU today and to examine for themselves the true nature of “Israel Peace Week.”
-Kristen Martin
CAS 2013