Water
Blogging may be light for a bit, as I've got some deadlines to meet. On the other hand, it's a bad habit that's hard to buck, so who knows...
Last October Amnesty International published a report about how Israel is drinking all the Palestinian water. (Here's the summary, and here's the 112-page report). Only this morning, while looking for something else, did I see that Israel's Water Authority posted a reply back in November, which in turn relies on a report posted back in March 2009, here. I skimmed over the summary of the Amnesty report, and read the 9-page November response; the two longer documents I'll need more time for - whenever. Especially as the little reading I've done convinces me that it's a complex topic. You have to know lots of stuff in order to be able to make sense of the different positions. Merely bandying numbers around won't fly. Not if you're serious. There are hydrology issues, there are legal issues, there are diplomatic issues (who signed what and what does it mean), there are economic issues, there are political issues - and without a reasonable grasp of the essentials, the so-called human rights issues can't be seriously addressed.
I'm posting merely as a public service. If anyone wishes to read the documents and tell us what's in them, great. I'll even go further: if anyone wishes to write a serious article about what's going on, I'll gladly host them here (tho there are vastly more popular venues elsewhere).
Last October Amnesty International published a report about how Israel is drinking all the Palestinian water. (Here's the summary, and here's the 112-page report). Only this morning, while looking for something else, did I see that Israel's Water Authority posted a reply back in November, which in turn relies on a report posted back in March 2009, here. I skimmed over the summary of the Amnesty report, and read the 9-page November response; the two longer documents I'll need more time for - whenever. Especially as the little reading I've done convinces me that it's a complex topic. You have to know lots of stuff in order to be able to make sense of the different positions. Merely bandying numbers around won't fly. Not if you're serious. There are hydrology issues, there are legal issues, there are diplomatic issues (who signed what and what does it mean), there are economic issues, there are political issues - and without a reasonable grasp of the essentials, the so-called human rights issues can't be seriously addressed.
I'm posting merely as a public service. If anyone wishes to read the documents and tell us what's in them, great. I'll even go further: if anyone wishes to write a serious article about what's going on, I'll gladly host them here (tho there are vastly more popular venues elsewhere).
Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
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