Oct 27, 2009, 14:08 GMT
London/Tel Aviv - Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of denying adequate water supplies to the Palestinians, an allegation promptly rejected by Israel as 'distorted and superficial.'
AI in London said that while Palestinians were being denied, Israeli settlers could 'enjoy lush lawns and swimming pools.'
The Amnesty report, titled Troubled Waters, claims that Israel retains total control over shared water resources and uses over 80 per cent of water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
On average, Palestinian daily water consumption barely reached 70 litres per person a day, while Israeli daily consumption was over four times as high at more than 300 litres per day.
In some rural communities Palestinians survived on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended by aid organizations for domestic use in emergency situations, the 112-page report said.
It said that between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities had no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevented them from even collecting rainwater.
In contrast, Israeli settlers in the West Bank had 'intensive- irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools,' said Amnesty.
Numbering about 450,000, the settlers used as much or more water than the entire Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.
Israel was quick to refute the Amnesty report and the figures in it.
Minister of Infrastructure Uzi Landau calling it 'distorted and superficial,' while the Israel Water Authority said it had not been contacted by any of Amnesty's researchers to comment on the findings, or present its own.
The Israel Foreign Ministry, for its part, also rejected the report, and questioned the motives of those behind it.
Landau said that Israel adhered to all its water agreements, and supplied the Palestinians with more water than previously agreed on.
He claimed that the Palestinians would not build water purification plants, despite the foreign funding they received in order to do so.
The Water Authority also took issue with some of the report's conclusions.
It said that while Israeli access to water before the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, was about 500 cubic metres per person per year, it has now dropped to 149 cubic metres per person per year.
In contrast, the Authority said, Palestinian consumption has risen from 87 cubic metres per person per year to 105 cubic metres per person per year.
The Israel Foreign Ministry said that Israel was abiding by, and even exceeding, its obligations under the water agreements between the two sides, but the Palestinians were not.
Israel also offered the Palestinians desalinated water, but this offer was rejected 'due to political motivations,' a foreign ministry statement said.
The ministry also accused Amnesty of choosing 'to ignore Israeli data, papers and reports, although they contain verifiable facts presented with total transparency.'
'This questionable approach, which consists in systematically disregarding Israeli material while relying exclusively on Palestinian allegations, raises doubts as to the real intentions of the report's authors and of the organization itself,' the statement said.
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