Qalandiya: there is water in the faucets only a few hours a day
Water is a basic commodity. No water - no life.
The fact that Israel dehydrates the West Bank Palestinians should (also) be tried in international courts.
The roofs in towns and villages are loaded with water tanks, voicelessly telling the dehydration story that Israel exerts upon the Palestinian homes situated on the darker side of the Apartheid Wall.
Friends said that there is water in their faucets only a few hours a day. For the rest of the time, they must use water kept in buckets on the roofs.
Thus, in Qalandiya refugee camp, thus in Kafr ‘Aqab which is a part of larger-Jerusalem and whose inhabitants hold a blue (Israeli resident) ID. They, for their part, pay the municipality regularly for fear of having their resident status revoked. The municipality, on the other hand, violates its contract with its own inhabitants and denies them their most basic rights.
“I am on my way to take a shower at a friends house, on the other side of the Wall”, says a person who stopped for a moment and explained that he does not wish to waste his daily water allotment on a shower.
I made contact with the Israeli Civil Rights Association and they - said my interlocutor - are petitioning this issue as well at the Israeli Supreme Court.
Once again, the search for anyone of Abdallah’s family has come to nothing.
Abdallah is still in jail, no one knows why nor until when.
His incarceration has lasted many months and its end is nowhere to be seen. A common friend said that at the end of every month in jail, his release date is postponed by another month. He is suspected of belonging to Hamas. Not violent Hamas, with guns and such - said the man - but believing in the organization’s principles. That’s why.
People said that yesterday, Saturday, the day Khan Yunes was attacked in the attempt to eliminate Mohammad Def, an action during which so many Palestinians were killed for no fault of their own, people who need to cross Qalandiya Checkpoint could not do so. The checkpoint was closed from morning till evening, like a curfew, the start and finish of which remained unannounced.
The highway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, broken by a checkpoint that slows down and crowds its traffic, is used by many as an opportunity to persuade the drivers stuck in this endless wait to show their waters, trying to make a few shekels for their family’s livelihood. The vendors are usually young men and boys, women rarely deal in vending. But a little girl leans on a windshield and offers a package of tissues for sale. It’s a very rare sight, attesting to the dire economic situation experienced by West Bank Palestinians.
I write “West Bank Palestinians” because the Jewish West Bankers live on an entirely different economic plane, completely detached from that of their neighbors whose land they have stolen and whose future is the colonists’ existential future.