Although this article is a year old, it is still so relevant with the incessant complaints against Israel that we are not doing enough for the "poor" Gazans.
Never is a word written about the responsibility of the Hamas government to take care of its own citizens.
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The question is often posed: If their Arab and Muslim brothers around
the region feel so strongly about the Palestinian people, why haven’t billions
of dirhams, dinars, riyals, pounds or even rupees found their way into
large-scale development projects aimed at alleviating poverty in the Gaza
Strip?
“But.. but… but… Israel!” the cry often comes. An argument that makes as
little sense in theory as it does in practice. To get the facts straight from
the outset is important, as misinformation propagated by the delegitimisers of
the Jewish state often leads to erroneous beliefs being implanted in the minds
of journalists, activists and, importantly, legislators.
How else could an Early Day Motion in the British Parliament have been
tabled blaming the Israeli government for a situation that the World Bank
claimed in 2009 would make the Gaza strip ‘uninhabitable’? But the World
Bank didn’t blame Israel and a similar report by the United Nations stated that
while Operation Cast Lead intensified the problems already faced, Gaza’s
problems were “due to underinvestment in environmental systems, lack of
progress on priority environmental projects and the collapse of governance
mechanisms.”
The Early Day Motion (below) states that “Israeli occupation policies”
are to blame for the shortage of water in Gaza. In reality, the situation comes
down to a number of factors that are not down to the “Israeli occupation”, a
nonsensical reference to the state-of-affairs in Gaza that ended with Israeli
withdrawal in 2005.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza strip and turned the area into a
launching pad for its terrorist attacks against Israel, ordinary Gazans have
suffered as Hamas continues to provoke Israeli responses through rocket-fire
into civilian areas of Israel. In late 2012, Hamas targeted both Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem, evidence that its goal is to cause as much human suffering as
possible. And indeed it has.
In Gaza, Hamas’s effective dictatorship over the strip means it is the
authority responsible for infrastructure. Yet the aid it receives from
international donors goes primarily into funding its terrorist activities.
Supplies into Gaza are often, rightfully throttled to stop machine parts and
materials that can be forged into weaponry getting in. This is not an
‘occupation policy’. It is a necessary defensive move taken by an embattled
state in the throes of a prolonged conflict.
The World Bank found that indeed it is the case that a lack of materials
remains a pre-eminent factor in the Gazan water problem. While Israel, it
claims, is guilty of overreaching in terms of the extract of water from the
aquifers; the point has been conversely made that authorities in Gaza have done
similar things, such as illegally drilling over 250 wells without authorization
from the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee.
Most recently of course, it was announced that the World Bank will be donating $6.4m to Gaza in order
to assist in infrastructure building in Gaza. The grant will finally be
augmented by an Islamic organisation, the Islamic Development Bank, to the tune
of $11.1m, in order to construct water tanks and distribute water. Israel of
course, has been keen to move forward with a project of this sort since early 2012, when Energy and Water
Minister Uzi Landau stated, “Our expertise is available to all of our friends,
including some of those who don’t accept us there, which is the Palestinians.
We would like to see their projects going on. They however say they want to
take care of their own needs, which is fine with us.”
Israel is no stranger to resourcefulness in this area, with
government-sponsored innovations helping Israel to reduce its wastefulness and
bring down the amount of water required per capita. In reality, Israel consumes
only a fraction more water than Gaza does, on a per capita basis. The subject
of water was agreed upon under the terms of the Oslo Accords (part II) and
Israel has not only fulfilled its obligations under the terms of that agreement,
but actually supplies more water to Gaza and the West Bank than it is obliged
to do.
To repeat, for this is key, Israel has met all its
obligations according to the Oslo Water Agreement, in terms of the additional
quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has exceeded the
requirements. Conversely, the Palestinians have breached two major areas of the
agreement, specifically with relation to the digging of ‘pirate wells’ and in
allowing wastewater to flow into streams untreated. That was their part of the
bargain.
Meanwhile, of course, while Gazans continue to require more and more
water to fuel the growing population in the area, their brothers in Egypt are
squandering gallons of it to close off tunnels that run between Egypt and Gaza,
as has been reported today. The Muslim Brotherhood-run country has connected a
well on their side of the border to rubber hoses which flood the tunnels. Of
course, this is an attempt to crack down on illegal smuggling similar, though
arguably harsher and more wasteful than the policies enacted by the Israeli
government. One can’t help but wonder when the charges of ‘creating a prison
camp’ and ‘oppressing the Palestinian people’ will be leveled at Egypt.
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