[spectre] acceptable ethic cleansing while we sleep..

[JSalloum@aol.com]

>From National Geographic, October 2002


No Respite for West Bank Locals


By Andrew Cockburn



The latest news from the West Bank, occupied by Israel since June 

1967, differs from earlier reports only in that the situation for the 

vast majority of inhabitants has grown even worse. Take, for example, 

one of the most fundamental human requirements: water. The drought 

that has been ravaging the entire Middle East for several years hit 

Israel hard, and Palestinians, according to the Israeli human rights 

organization B'Tselem, have been undergoing "a severe water 

shortage." Two hundred thousand Palestinians on the West Bank found 

themselves without any access to a water pipeline network and 

therefore had to rely in part on supplies brought in by tanker, which 

cost them three to five times as much as piped water.


However, the tankers often come from areas that are under Israeli 

curfew (meaning that all outside movement is forbidden.) They 

therefore have to wait until the curfew is lifted before filling up 

and setting off to make deliveries. The roughly 8,500 people living 

in the town of Bayt Furik, for example, totally depend in water 

brought in from the city of Nablus, which has been frequently under 

curfew for most of the day since May. The Israeli military 

authorities allow tankers to enter Bayt Furik only between 8 a.m. and 

2 p.m. In consequence, each of the 13 tankers serving the town can 

make only one delivery a day, as opposed to the four or five daily 

deliveries that they usually made before the present disturbances, 

known as the Al Aqsa intifada, began in September 2000. The effect of 

this severe reduction in summer water supply on the town's beef and 

chicken industry has been predictably severe, just one more reason 

why some 70 percent of the inhabitants of the occupied territories 

are living on $2 a day or less.


Besides the curfews, Palestinians are also circumscribed by the 

policy of "internal closure" that restricts travel between towns and 

villages and forces people to forsake the (blockaded) road and travel 

the way they did 150 years ago. As the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz 

noted on September 4, Palestinians are "walking by foot on dirt 

paths, riding donkeys or tractors (the modern alternative to the 

camel) in order to fulfill basic needs like water, a few vegetables, 

medicines and studies." The distances traveled are expanding all the 

time. It now, on average, takes half a day to get from Hebron to 

Bethlehem (about 15 miles/ 24 kilometers) and several days to get 

from Jenin to Ramallah (about 40 miles/ 64 kilometers).


The occupation and intifada are wreaking an immense toll on the 

Israeli as well as the Palestinian economy. The chairman of the 

Israeli National Security Council recently announced that the 

intifada was causing the equivalent of 2.5 - 3 billion dollars or 

more a year in damage to the economy, and that Israel could not 

"endure the stresses imposed by its security needs" for long.

Increasing numbers of Palestinians are also concluding they can no 

longer endure the situation. While some politicians in the Israeli 

government have long urged the "transfer" of the Palestinian 

population, this now appears to be actually happening. According 

to one Palestinian official, 80,000 people, finding living conditions 

under the occupation unbearable, have left the West Bank and Gaza 

Strip since the beginning of the year, a rise of 50 percent over last 

year. There are reports of thousands more camped near the Jordanian 

border waiting their turn to cross and join millions of their fellow 

countrymen already living in embittered exile.