Thirty years after their signing, the Oslo Accords have not brought the much-hoped-for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and their failure is particularly evident in the area of water.
On September 13, 1993, after six months of secret negotiations in the Norwegian capital, Bill Clinton orchestrated, on the lawn of the White House, a historic handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The agreements lead to mutual recognition of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and establish a five-year transitional Palestinian autonomy.
The negotiators then had to put the finishing touches to the settlement of key issues, such as the status of Jerusalem or that of Palestinian refugees, with the aim of creating a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel.
Three decades later, many consider the two-state solution dead and buried. Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the current impasse and the continuation of violence, deploring the absence of a partner with whom to speak on the opposite side.
The agreements, which established a transitional framework for cohabitation, remain, despite their obsolescence, the reference framework governing many aspects of Palestinian daily life.
This is how near Hebron, in the south of the occupied West Bank, the Bassam Doudine wells were blocked by the Israeli army in July.
“They didn’t warn me,” says this 47-year-old farmer, still surprised. “In half an hour (the cement) had solidified.”
Mr. Doudine may claim to have a property deed dating back to the time when the Ottoman Empire was master of Palestine, but the map drawn by the Oslo Accords is now the only authoritative one.
It divides the West Bank into three sectors: zone A administered by the Palestinian Authority, zone B under mixed Israeli and Palestinian jurisdiction, and zone C, or 60% of the territory, entirely under Israeli control.
The farmer’s fields are located on the edge of the village of al-Hijra, on land classified as zone C.
Israeli authorization is required to be able to dig a well there, as confirmed to AFP by COGAT, an organ of the Israeli Ministry of Defense supervising civilian activities in the Palestinian Territories.
If the Bassam Doudine wells were blocked, it is, affirms COGAT, because they had “been drilled in violation of the construction agreement” and because they “damaged the sources, and presented a risk of contamination of the aquifer.
To resolve disputes, the Oslo Accords provided for a commission dedicated to water management, on which Palestinians and Israelis sit.
Chaddad Attili, who was a member for the Palestinian side, describes it as the “Theodule committee”. He explains that Palestinian projects there are generally rejected by the Israelis, or blocked for years before very possible approval.
“Every time we refuse an Israeli project, they implement it anyway, simply because they have the power,” he adds.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli Water Management Authority refused to grant an interview and referred it to COGAT, which also declined several interview requests.
The Palestinians have water resources.
However, in the fertile Jordan Valley, renowned for its date palm plantations, access to water remains very unequal.
In Jericho (zone A), you can splash around at leisure in the numerous private swimming pools of patrician villas, often rented to Palestinian tourists, or in water amusement parks.
But just a few kilometers away, in zone C, Diab Attiyat, a 42-year-old farmer and recipient of aid from the World Food Program (WFP), explains that he only receives water once a week, which he stores in cisterns to then irrigate the land using drip irrigation.
“It annoys me to see others wasting water,” he says of his wealthy neighbors.
Would it be possible to pump water from these abundant local springs and distribute it to other Palestinian locations?
According to Mr. Attili, this would be practically impossible: too expensive and too complex in terms of authorizations.
In the entire Palestinian Territories, excluding East Jerusalem annexed by Israel, daily water consumption per capita amounts to 86.3 liters per day, according to figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) for 2021.
Notable exception, around Jericho, where it rises to 183.2 liters.
In Israel too, water consumption varies from one region to another with certain paradoxes such as in the Negev desert (south) where residents use 166 liters of water per day, partly due to local infrastructure linked to tourism.
The average is around 100 liters per day per person according to the Israeli Water Management Authority.
What about the 490,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, in settlements that the UN deems illegal under international law?
Josh Hasten, spokesperson for Gush Etzion, a group of settlements in the southern West Bank near Bethlehem, believes that if residents have not suffered from water shortages, it is thanks to Israel’s massive investments in desalination technologies.
“We see that Israel is progressing and improving in this area, regardless of the Oslo agreements,” he welcomes.
He accuses the Palestinian Authority of being responsible for the mismanagement of water resources, brushing aside the impact of what was put in place by the 1993 agreements, which he also describes as “absolute disaster”.
Israel produces 63% of its drinking water from water from the Mediterranean.
The Gaza Strip, bordering the same sea, could follow in the footsteps of its neighbor with three desalination plants.
“Water is life,” we can read on one of them, in the south of this coastal territory subject to an Israeli blockade.
“I hope that (desalination) will develop,” confides a technician at the plant, Zaïn al-Abadine, before emphasizing the scarcity of drinking water resources in the territory and the excessive and increasing salinity of the aquifers. underground, which makes their water unfit for consumption.
On this cramped strip of land, undermined by poverty and unemployment, the most deprived obtain their supplies from stations where drinking water is free. The wealthiest have water delivered in bottles by private companies.
Gaza’s inter-municipality services already claim that desalinated water benefits 40% of the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
And according to PCBS, it is an Israeli state-owned company, Mekorot, that supplies 22% of the drinking water distributed to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the Palestinian Authority footing the bill.
For EcoPeace Middle East, a joint Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian environmental defense organization, access to drinking water is a fundamental right regardless of the various attempts to resolve the conflict.
Thirty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, “a comprehensive water resources management mechanism is needed to meet all needs,” says EcoPeace director in the Palestinian Territories, Nada Majdalani.
For his Israeli counterpart, Gidon Bromberg, it is high time to “recognize that the logic (of the Oslo accords) is failing on all sides.”
12/09/2023 22:47:48 – Hebron (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP