Palestine's Stance

Palestinians claim that they are prevented from using their own water resources by the intense military power that is Israel, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to buy water from them at inflated prices. Israel allocates to its citizens, including those living in settlements in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law, between three and five times more water than the Palestinians, which Palestinians claim is crippling to their agricultural economy. Additionally, Palestinians also say they are always the first community to be rationed as reserves run dry, and there have been many recorded scenarios where Palestinians on one side of the border didn’t have enough water to live and just miles away their Israeli neighbors were enjoying swimming pools and big lawns that require so much water to sustain. Palestinians constantly point out this unfair discrepancy between them and their neighbors and use these examples to show that water is more political than anything else.

 

Additionally, while the population of Palestine has doubled since 1995, their percentage of water resources has not changed. In addition to the JWC approval, all projects in Area C also require a permit by the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), which are notoriously difficult to obtain. As reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the ICA has refused between 2010 and 2014 98.5 percent of the Palestinian building permit applications for Area C projects. This stance could have some issues, as a quick solution of Israel providing more sovereignty to Palestine to address their water issue could possibly reset some of the peace agreements that the countries have worked out.