Love of the Land: The end of the road for Amnesty’s reputation? New report accuses Israel of “denying water to Palestinians”.

The end of the road for Amnesty’s reputation? New report accuses Israel of “denying water to Palestinians”.

Summer relaxation in Ramallah

Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
27 October 09

Amnesty International has today released yet another blatantly one-sided attack on Israel, this time alleging that the Jewish state is “denying water to Palestinians”. Last week, I alerted readers to the fact that the UK branch of Amnesty plans to roadshow its latest report at a meeting on October 28 featuring the militantly anti-Zionist Ben White as its guest speaker. Amnesty is promoting White’s recently published book, “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide” on its website.

Since Amnesty is now implicitly endorsing the notion of Israel as an apartheid state, it should come as no surprise that the report adopts the Palestinian narrative of the wider conflict in its entirety.

Amnesty’s allegations centre on the amount of water available to Palestinians on the West Bank as compared to settlers. According to the Jerusalem Post, Amnesty did not even take the trouble to consult the Israeli Water Authority, something which in itself gives a clear impression of the agenda that underlies the latest report.

But impressions and suppositions are no longer necessary with Amnesty International, as the wording of the statement flagging up the report makes clear:


“Over more than 40 years of occupation, restrictions imposed by Israel on the Palestinians’ access to water have prevented the development of water infrastructure and facilities in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], consequently denying hundreds of thousands of Palestinians the right to live a normal life, to have adequate food, housing, or health, and to economic development.”

Just a second. No one denies that the Palestinians live in conditions of economc backwardness. It would be no surprise, therefore, if their consumption of water were less than for the relatively wealthier Israelis. This is a sociological reality which applies globally. Try comparing American water consumption per capita with Mexico’s — (I haven’t seen the figures but I’d bet my wallet that the disparity is enormous). But even leaving that aside, note how Amnesty effortlessly and unashamedly apportions blame to the “more than 40 years of occupation”.

Now, just for the sake of argument, let us say that that the Amnesty view is one reasonable way of characterising the situation. It is certainly the way that the Palestinians would characterise it. But if we accept that as one way of characterising the situation let us also consider the following as another:

“There have been more than 60 years of rejectionism and terrorism by Palestinian and Arab leaders. This has had the derivative effects of both reducing their capacity to consume water at first world levels and of depriving them of the kind of statehood (offered on several occasions by Israel) which would allow them to take greater control of their own water resources in particular and their economic development in general”.

Being as objective as one possibly could be, I put it to readers that there are two narratives to contend with here. Personally, I believe there is overwhelming evidence to support the second of those two narratives. But that is not the point.

Amnesty International is bound by its constitution to be impartial. Yet in this instance, as in so many others where Israel is concerned, it has adopted hook, line and sinker one of of the two available narratives and simply erased the other from consideration.

That is not a sign of an organisation whose main priority is to promote an unbiased appraisal of an undoubtedly important humanitarian problem. It is a sign of an organisation whose underlying agenda is avowedly political and avowedly anti-Israeli.

I challenge anyone to provide an evidence-based counter-argument to my contention that that conclusion is now beyond all reasonable doubt.

Postscript: The Mid East media analyst Tom Gross (see link to his website below) has contacted me to say that BBC World Service TV has been running this story at the top of the hour every hour all morning. They’re never ones to miss an opportunity like this, are they?

To read the Amnesty report, click here:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18466

To see Tom Gross’s website, click here:

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/

Related: NGO Monitor: Amnesty’s Water Report Timed to Support Latest Israel Boycott Campaign

Love of the Land: The end of the road for Amnesty’s reputation? New report accuses Israel of “denying water to Palestinians”.