Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have

had their water supply reduced almost by half.

This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel’s national

water company, “Mekorot”, decided to cut off – or significantly reduce – its

water supply to Jenin, Salfit, and many villages around Nablus, among other

regions.

Israel has been “waging a water war” against Palestinians, according

to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. The irony is that

the water provided by “Mekorot” is actually Palestinian water, usurped from

West Bank aquifers. While Israelis, including illegal West Bank settlements,

use the vast majority of it, Palestinians are sold their own water back at high

prices.

By shutting down the water supply at a time that Israeli

officials are planning to export essentially Palestinian water, Israel is

once more utilizing water as a form of collective punishment.

This is hardly new. I still remember the trepidation in my parents’ voices

whenever they feared that the water supply was reaching a dangerously low level.

It was almost a daily discussion at home.

Whenever clashes erupted between stone-throwing children and Israeli occupation

forces on the outskirts of the refugee camp, we always, instinctively, rushed

to fill up the few water buckets and bottles we had scattered around the house.

This was the case during the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which

erupted in 1987 throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Whenever clashes erupted, one of the initial actions carried out by the Israeli

Civil Administration – a less ominous title for the offices of the Israeli occupation

army – was to collectively punish the whole population of whichever refugee

camp rose up in rebellion.

The steps the Israeli army took became redundant, although grew more vengeful

with time: a strict military curfew (meaning the shutting down of the entire

area and the confinement of all residents to their homes under the threat of

death); cutting off electricity and shutting off the water supply.

Of course, these steps were taken only in the first stage of the collective

punishment, which lasted for days or weeks, sometimes even months, pushing some

refugee camps to the point of starvation.

Since there was little the refugees could do to challenge the authority of

a well-equipped army, they invested whatever meager resources or time that they

had to plot their survival.

Thus, the obsession over water, because once the water supply ran out, there

was nothing to be done; except, of course, that of Salat Al-Istisqa or the “Prayer

for Rain” that devout Muslims invoke during times of drought. The elders in

the camp insist that it actually works, and reference miraculous stories from

the past where this special prayer…