Israel waging 'water war' against Palestinians to force them out: Expert

By Ali Ghorban Bagheri

The Israeli regime has escalated its “water war” against Palestinians to force them out of their lands, says an expert on Palestinian affairs.

Mohammad Faris Jaradat made the remarks in an interview with the Press TV website in reference to the Israeli occupation raiding Palestinian farmland and pouring concrete into water wells near a village south of al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank in late July.

The footage was widely circulated on social media and generated outrage around the world.

Jaradat said the apartheid regime is trying to make Palestinian lands uninhabitable.

“The main goal of this policy is to destroy the chance of Palestinians living in their homeland, to force them to migrate to other places or to other countries,” he said.

The expert said the regime attacks Palestinian wells and destroys them under the pretext that they lack permits and violate the water quota of Israeli settlements, which is seven times more than that of Palestinians.

“Inside the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers and Palestinians have very different levels of access to water resources. Here there are two groups of people. One is provided with all kinds of resources and the other is denied any resources,” he told in conversation with the Press TV website.

“This is why Israeli agricultural projects flourish and officials including PM Benjamin Netanyahu brag about the regime’s agricultural achievements. Palestinian farmers are deprived of the basic requirements for cultivation, resulting in them being unable to produce good agricultural products.”

On how the Palestinians react to this war waged by the occupying regime, he said that people are mostly determined to resist the draconian measures.

“Few Palestinians think of immigration. In fact, more and more Palestinians now believe resistance is their only option, whether in small villages, or in the besieged Gaza, or in al-Quds, or Jenin,” Jaradat remarked.

“This resistance is meant to defend Islam and Palestinians’ national and religious values and everybody participates in this, except a small number of people.”

According to rights activists, the regime controls about 80 percent of water reserves in the occupied West Bank, but both the West Bank and Gaza Strip both are battling drought.

A recent report from an Israeli group stated that Israelis, including those occupying illegal settlements, use three times as much water a day as Palestinians in the occupied West Bank do.

When Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the UN secretary-general, was asked about it at a press conference earlier this month, he stopped short of condemning the Israeli regime officials.

“The Special Coordinator does in fact report on problems including the impeding of the facilities used by Palestinians.  And we again call on all authorities to avoid actions that harm the civilian Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories,” he told reporters.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk