The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 | Israel Today Staff
Earlier this month, the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, sparked a political and media brouhaha when, from the Knesset podium, he suggested that Israel severely limits the Palestinians’ access to clean water.
Israelis from across the political spectrum were incredulous that Schulz would repeat blatant Palestinian propaganda without bothering to check the facts, which he admitted to not doing prior to addressing the Israeli lawmakers.
The facts, as they relate to this issue, are readily available to anyone interested in the truth.
But, just in case others engaged in commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict similarly don’t have the time for checking facts on their own, Prof. Haim Gvirtzman of the Israeli think tank Begin-Sadan Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) has published a thorough review of the situation titled “The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels.”
The executive summary of Prof. Gvirtzman’s survey reads:
"Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant underground water resources, build a seawater desalination plant, fix massive leakage from their municipal water pipes, build sewage treatment plants, irrigate land with treated sewage effluents or modern water-saving devices, or bill their own citizens for consumer water usage, leading to enormous waste.
“At the same time, they drill illegally into Israel’s water resources, and send their sewage flowing into the valleys and streams of central Israel. In short, the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is not interested in practical solutions to solve the Palestinian people’s water shortages, but rather perpetuation of the shortages and the besmirching of Israel.”
This is the same tactic that we have seen with the so-called “Palestinian refugees.” While Israel has fully integrated the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries (and while their descendants would never dream of considering themselves refugees), the Arabs have purposely kept Palestinian Arabs and their descendants living as refugees for nearly 70 years.
Click here to read the full text of “The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels.”
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