More Amnesty Water Falsehoods
Martin Sherman picks up on the immense task of debunking the many falsehoods in Amnesty’s water report. Sherman also spells out the similarities between Amnesty’s campaign and the contemporaneous U.S. tour by activist Omar Barghouti in which he calls for boycott of Israel while voicing allegations concerning water using oddly reminiscent language. Sherman writes in the Jerusalem Post:
The facts, however, paint a very different – indeed antithetical – picture to that painted by the A/B (Amnesty/Barghouti) duo. For by every conceivable measure of consumption of fresh water, the lot of the Palestinians has improved dramatically – indeed beyond all recognition – since 1967 under Israeli administration, whether it be overall consumption, per capita consumption, consumption relative to Israel/Israelis, conveyance of running water to households, area under agricultural cultivation or size of the agricultural product.
In the period 1967-2006 the overall annual consumption of the Palestinians in the West Bank grew by 300 percent – from 60 million cubic meters to 180 million cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15% – from 86 cu.m. to 100 cu.m. By contrast the overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1411 million cu.m. to 1211 million cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted an amazing 300% from 508 cu.m. to 170 cu.m. – a decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for agricultural irrigation and of naturally occurring water by artificially produced (desalinated) water for domestic use. The Palestinians, by contrast, have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed upon sewage purification plants, allowing untreated effluents to endanger “downstream” Israeli supplies.
Moreover, from 1967 to the years preceding Oslo, the Palestinian household consumption of water rose dramatically under Israeli rule – by almost 600%, significantly higher than in Israel where domestic consumption in the same period rose by approximately 230%. But not only did consumption by households improve, so did conveyance to households. In 1967 only 50 West Bank villages were connected to a running water system whereas by the early 1990s the number rose to 260.
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