ISRAEL KALLAR AMNESTYRAPPORT OM VATTEN BEFÄNGD

Tisdag 2009-10-27

Israelerna använder 4 gånger mer vatten än palestinierna. Amnesty kom med en rapport som ger Israel skulden för att palestinierna får sålite vatten så att de riskerar hälsan. Amnesty menar att det kanske är en metod att driva bort palestinierna från deras mark för att bosättare ska kunna bygga bosättningar. Cecilia Uddén (SR Ekot)kompletterade beskyllningarna genom att intervjua en palestinsk bonde som klagade att han kan inte odla.

Ingen från den israeliska sidan intervjuades, som vanligt kan man frestas att tillägga.

Mark Regev, talesman för den israeliske premiärminister Benjamin Netanjahu som uttalade sig i den israeliska dagstidningen Ha'aretz (27 oktober) avfärdade Amnestys uttalanden som "befängda."

Israel säger att de har levt upp till sina skyldigheter enligt 1993 års Oslo-fördrag, medan palestinierna inte har gjort detsamma, genom att ha underlåtit att återanvända regnvatten och genom att inte distribuera vatten på ett effektivt sätt.

Israel har levererat 20,8 miljoner kubikmeter (övers.anm) vatten utöver vad som krävs av dem enligt vattenavtalet, sade talesmannen Mark Regev.

Israel, som själv måste hantera en ökande vattenbrist och ökade vattenavgifter, kontrollerar mycket av Västbankens vattentillgånger och pumpar upp vatten från en akvifer som överbryggar Israel och Västbanken.

Israel säljer tillbaka vatten till palestinierna i enlighet med kvota överenskomna i Oslo-avtalet, men har inte följt med befolkningsökningen på Västbanken säger Amnesty".

Israels vattenmyndighet sade att vattenmängderna var missvisande eftersom rapporten inte tar hänsyn till intern distribution och jämförde inte total vattenkonsumtion. Myndigheten tillade att de totala siffrorna var 408 liter per dag för israeler och 287 liter för palestinier."

Ha'aretz 27 oktober, av Cnaan Lipshiz (översättning av Lisa Abramowicz).

http://www.google.se/search?q=haaretz%2BAmnesty%2Bwater&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

"A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Amnesty's statement that Israel was depriving the Palestinians of water as "preposterous."

Israel says it has met its obligations under the 1993 Oslo agreement while Palestinians have failed to meet their own requirements to recycle water and were not distributing water efficiently.

"Israel supplied Palestinians 20.8 million cubic liters above and beyond what it is obliged to do under the water agreement," said Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev.

Israel, itself facing unprecedented water shortages and rising tariffs, controls much of the West Bank's supplies, pumping from an aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory.

Israel sells some water back to the Palestinians under quotas agreed in the Oslo accords that rights groups say have not been increased in line with population growth.

Jerusalem-based non-profit organization NGO Monitor has accused Amnesty of tipping off a Palestinian activist about the contents of the document, thereby "timing its report to strengthen the Israel boycott campaign."

According to NGO Monitor, Omar Barghouti, a founder of the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, planned a week ago to include sections of the Amnesty report in a November 1 entitled "water as a tool of apartheid and a means of ethnic cleansing."

An NGO Monitor employee said she had first learned about the lecture last week.

Amnesty spokesperson Dana Zimmerman said the organization had not shared its report with Barghouti. "I guess this activist got our report exactly the same way NGO monitor got our report," she said.

Barghouti confirmed to Haaretz that his lecture would rely on the report, but did not say how he had received it.

The report said Gaza's coastal aquifer, its sole fresh water resource, had been polluted by infiltration of seawater and raw sewage and degraded by over-extraction.

Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade of the Gaza Strip, an area taken over by the Islamist Hamas movement, which ousted Palestinian forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in a bloody 2007 coup.

Israel's water authority called the report "biased and incorrect, at the very least" and said that while there was a water gap, it was not nearly as big as presented in Amnesty's findings.

Amnesty said water consumption in Israel was 300 liters a day per person and 70 liters a day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel's water authority said those numbers were misleading because they took into account internal distribution and did not compare total water consumption. It said the total figures were 408 liters per day for Israelis and 287 liters for Palestinians.

The Amnesty report described how Palestinians in the West Bank relied on water from tankers that were forced to take long detours to avoid Israeli military checkpoints and roads off-limits to Palestinians.

The situation had led to steep increases in water prices, the report said. "