Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #5

Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #5

CAMERA/Snapshots
03 November 09

Page 12 of Amnesty's "Troubled Water" report alleges that Israel has almost entirely frozen development of water infrastructure in the Palestinian areas. The report states:

Under the new Israeli military regime imposed in the OPT, Palestinians could no longer drill new wells or rehabilitate or even just repair existing ones, or carry out other any water-related projects (from pipes, networks, and reservoirs to wells and springs and even rainwater cisterns), without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. In theory such permits for drilling or rehabilitating wells could be obtained after a lengthy and complicated bureaucratic process; in practice, most applications for such permits were rejected. Only 13 permits were granted in the 29 years from 1967 to 1996 (when the PWA was established), but all of these were for projects for domestic use only and they were not sufficient to make up even for the replacement of wells that had dried up or fallen into disrepair since 1967. . . .

The regime put in place by the Israeli army not only prevented the development of new Palestinian wells and infrastructure, but also limited the use and upkeep of existing ones. It prevented the rehabilitation of old wells. . . (Emphasis added)

First, Amnesty ignores significant development in infrastructure since 1995. As the World Bank states:

The water and wastewater sector [in the West Bank and Gaza] has come a long way since 1995:

* A capable national institution, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), has been built.

* The foundations for policy and operational coordination with Israel have been established;

* Several existing municipal distribution networks have been rehabilitated, new networks developed, and supplies improved; and several new wells have been drilled and many rehabilitated.

* Backbone primary network of bulk-water carriers are under construction in the West Bank and ready to be launched in Gaza;

* In Gaza not only have municipal networks and systems have been significantly upgraded, under an internationally recruited management contractor, effective managerial and operational systems have been established. . .

To be sure, the World Bank goes on to list more work that still needs to be done.

Second, what about Amnesty's claim that only 13 new wells were drilled from 1967 to 1995? As reported earlier by CAMERA here, during this period Israel drilled or permitted the drilling of over 50 new wells for the Palestinian population, laid hundreds of kilometers of new water mains and connected hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns to the newly built water system (Background: Water, Israel and the Middle East, Israel Foreign Ministry 1991; Marcia Drezon-Tepler, "Contested Waters and the Prospects for Arab-Israeli Peace," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 30, No. 2, April 1994)

Related: Amnesty Water Reports #1 #2 #3-4

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #5

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehoods #3, 4

Amnesty Water Report Falsehoods #3, 4

CAMERA/Snapshots
1 November 09

"Palestinian consumption in the OPT is about 70 litres a day per person," Amnesty's "Troubled Waters" report claims on page 3.

Again on page 10 Amnesty discusses Palestinians' per capita use of water, stating:

Palestinians have access to an average of no more than 60-70 liters per capita per day, and some survive on much less even than this, as little as 10-20 liters per person per day.

Neither statement about Palestinian water consumption includes a source or footnote, an oddity in this heavily sourced document. But it's clear why Amnesty chose not to cite aMarch 22, 2009 press release from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics marking World Water Day. The PCBS completely contradicts Amnesty's claim about per capita daily water use, stating:

Data [from the Water Statistics Report 2007] shows that the quantity of water supplied for domestic use in the Palestinian Territory was 175.6 MCM in 2007, and that the daily allocation per capital of the supplied water for domestic use in the Palestinian Territory was 135.8 (liter/capita/day). It reached only 46.6 (liter/capita/day) in Tubas Governorate. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the official Palestinian figure for water consumption is double the figure that Amnesty cites!

In another disparity between Amnesty and official Palestinian figures, Amnesty claims (page 10):

The total amount of water available to Palestinians from these various supplies [Jordan River, various aquifers, and water purchased from Israel] in recent years has been a maximum of some 170-180 MCM/Y, which reportedly fell to a mere 135 MCM in 2008, for a population of 2.3 million.

In contrast, the aforementioned Water Day PCBS press release states:

According to the Water Statistics Report 2007 the annual available water quantity in the Palestinian Territory was 335.4 MCM in 2007.

If Amnesty's figures aren't coming from official Palestinian sources, where do they originate? We will be happy to examine any theories.

Related: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2, Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #1

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehoods #3, 4

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2

Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2

TS

CAMERA/Snapshots
1 November 09

My colleague Alex Safian has published an in-depth backgrounder refuting Amnesty International's broader claims of discriminatory Israeli water policies.

Meanwhile, Snapshots will continue to refute more detailed specific claims in the Amnesty Report ("Troubled Waters -- Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water").

Falsehood #1 is here.

We find Falsehood #2 on page 4 of the Amnesty report:

The 450,000 Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.

This statement is absurd for so many reasons.

1) There are some 280,000 Israelis -- not 450,000 as Amnesty states -- living across the Green Line, called either the West Bank or by the biblical terms Judea and Samaria. (Here, we are citing numbers from the anti-settlement group Peace Now, which if anything would exaggerate, not understate, the number of settlers.)

As Amnesty itself states on page 7 of the very same report: "Currently more than 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the OPT, about half of them in East Jerusalem." In other words, Amnesty cannot be relied upon to even accurately state the number of Jews residing in the West Bank, let alone complex data concerning water usages among the populations.

2) Is it true that 280,000 Israelis living in the West Bank consume more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians residing there? According to page 3 of the Amnesty report,

Palestinian consumption in the OPT is about 70 liters a day per person -- well below the 100 litres per capita daily recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) -- whereas Israeli daily per consumption, about 300 liters, is about four times as much.

For argument's sake, let's accept Amnesty's numbers for Israeli and Palestinian consumption. On the Palestinian side, 2.3 million people multiplied by 70 liters is 161 million liters a day. On the Israeli side, 280,000 people multiplied by 300 liters totals totals 84 million liters a day. So, which is larger? You got it, even according to Amnesty's own numbers, Israelis in the West Bank use half the amount of water that the Palestinian population uses -- not more.

3) There is evidence that Amnesty knowingly manipulated its statistics. The footnote on the page 4 falsehood, regarding the 450,000 Israeli settlers and 2.3 million Palestinians allegedly living in the West Bank, states:

This figure excludes the more than 200,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem; though part of the OPT, East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel.

Thus, while Amnesty was careful to make a distinction between Jerusalem and West Bank Palestinians, it lumped together Jerusalem and West Bank Israelis and passed them all off as West Bank residents.

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2