Israel blames the victims again. This time the occupiers are complaining about untreated water going back into the system. But it is Israel that has been preventing Palestinians from building water treatment plants. Worse than that, earlier his year Israel deliberately flooded some Palestinian areas by opening the Al-Wadi dam east of Gaza without warning the Palestinian side.
An Israeli minister has threatened to cut off some water supplies to Palestinians in the West Bank unless they stopped “dumping untreated sewage”.
“If the Palestinians continue to dump their waste water, polluting rivers and the aquifer, Israe
l will stop supplying them”, Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told army radio.
“Palestinians must meet their duties and connect to sewage treatment plants. Otherwise, we’ll give them drinking water but none for industrial or agricultural needs”, Landau added.
The West Bank aquifer is a crucial source of water for both Israel and the occupied West Bank.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which is aiming to build the institutions and infrastructure of a viable, independent state by mid-2011, has blamed Israel for the lack of treatment plants.
“This is not a new position and we reject it completely. It is the Israelis who are keeping us from building waste water treatment plants”, commented Shaddad al-Attili, the head of the Palestinian Water Authority.
“We have been asking to carry out projects since 1997 but the Israelis have not given us permits to build stations in Areas B and C”, he added, referring to large areas of the West Bank that are under strict Israeli restrictions. more
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