Access to clean water may seem a basic right, but for many Palestinians it remains a pipe dream held up in broader conflict. In the second part of her series on water, Annabel Symington reports

Read the first part of The Samosa's water series here

The wall casts a wide shadow. It reaches out into the surrounding area, turning everything it touches black. Up close the wall is cracked. A thin line darts across the surface. It appears cold and fragile.

Behind the wall lies a vast pond of untreated sewage.

The wall has failed in the past. In March 2007, at 9.30 in the morning, the wall gave way and a wave of sewage swept across the nearby Bedouin village of Um Al Nasser, killing four people and displacing 300 families.

The wall of the Beit Lahia water treatment plant is one of many that protect Gaza’s 1.6 million residents from three million cubic metres of raw sewage that lies in vast sewage ponds in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel’s blockade on Gaza began in June 2007, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) has been unable to get the necessary equipment to reinforce the walls.

At the start of the Gaza war in late 2008, the PWA became increasingly concerned that the walls would not withstand the vibrations caused by the missiles and rockets that Israel and Hamas exchanged.

The walls did withstand the 22 days of war that ravaged Gaza, but eight months after the end of the conflict, the walls have still not been reinforced, and many Gazans still lack access to basic sanitation and water.

The problem is not confined to Gaza. In the West Bank, approximately 256,000 Palestinians lack access to water, and have to purchase water brought in from Israel. About one third of each household’s monthly income goes towards buying drinking water.

Israel controls an estimated 80-90 per cent of the water in the region, including the basin of the Jordan River – shared by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories – and the Coastal Aquifer, which lies under the Gaza Strip.

Israelis use four times more water than their Palestinian neighbours, with the average water consumption of Palestinians falling far below the World Heath Organisation’s recommended daily water allowance. 

At the World Water Forum that took place in Istanbul in March 2009, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas criticised Israel’s water policy towards the Palestinian territories and accused Israel of following a programme of “systematic de-development and destruction of Gaza's water infrastructure”.

Under international law, Israel, as an occupying power, has to provide water and basic sanitation for the occupied Palestinians, but in the weeks following the ceasefire that ended Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, more than 150,000 Gazans were left with no access to running water.

Most of the water used by Israel and the Palestinian Territories lies in transboundary aquifers. Despite rulings under the Geneva Convention that protects the basic human right to food and water, there is no law that determines how transnational water resources should be shared. In 1997, the UN introduced the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, but only 16 countries signed up to the convention, far short of the 35 needed for it to become international law. Israel abstained form voting on this convention, as did the UK and the USA.

According to the head of the PWA, Shaddad Al Attili, the Palestinians have proposed more than 140 water-related projects such as wastewater treatment plans, but they are all awaiting approval from the Israeli authorities, put on hold by the constant threat of conflict.

To try and alleviate the water situation in the Palestinian territories, the PWA suggested at the World Water Forum this year that it could import water from Turkey. Al Attili said that a third country was needed for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to achieve water security.

Despite the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories, Dr Aaron Wolf, professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, claims that water can be used to promote cooperation between countries rather than exacerbating conflict. “’Water wars’ was the rhetoric of the 1990s,” he said. “Today the language is more nuanced.”

But, looking at Israel, any examples of cooperation between the Jewish State and its neighbours appears to be matched by aggressive behaviour in return. The Johnston Plan of 1955 and the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994 both included stipulations to “recognise rightful water allocations”. But in September 2002, the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, warned that if Lebanon diverted water from the Hasbani River, which provides Israel with 10 per cent of its water, it would constitute a “casus belli”, or grounds for war.

So what does water mean today for Palestinians and a peace deal with Israel? A separate Palestinian state, based on the 1967 borders, would sit on top of nearly two thirds of Israel’s water, giving the Palestinians a legal claim to a large share of the region’s water.

If the Palestinians were to control the water of the aquifer that lies under the West Bank, Israel would have to adapt to using less water. Franklin Spinney, former analyst for the Pentagon, suggested that Israel could do this by economising on the water it uses for agriculture. Israel’s agricultural sector currently uses nearly 50 per cent of the country’s water, but contributes just 3 per cent to its GDP.

Lebanon could be the key to a regional solution on water – it is the only state in the region that has a water surplus and it holds most of its water within its own borders. Could Lebanon be the place to find the cooperation that Dr Wolf suggested water could bring to politically volatile areas?

The debate, with its myriad of opinions that surrounds any discussion related to Israel and a Palestinian state, is complex, confused and frequently ideologically driven. The Palestinians’ water problems appear to be inextricably caught up in this debate.