The Biblical "land of milk and honey" and the "wilderness" of the holy book are one and the same. There's the freshwater Sea of Galilee, the saltwater Dead Sea (getting deader by the minute), and the Jordan River in between. There is rocky desert, chaparral, and the occasional verdant spring.
Until the rampant development of urban Israel, suburban Israeli settlements on occupied Arab land, and the increasing gerrymandering, walling off, and bypass-roading of what is left of "Palestine" thanks to the Oslo Accords, there was basically enough water. Enough even to build a swimming pool in the then sleepy West Bank town of Ramallah, where I went in 1972 to dig its foundations out of solid rock. Even during those early years of The Occupation, Israelis and Palestinians managed to share the region's precious water resources.
"Share" is a word that would be difficult to justify in the current circumstances. Today's release by Amnesty International of its damning "Troubled Waters" report elicited a predictable official Israeli response, essentially saying "Water? ...what water problem?" After denying there is a problem, the Israeli MFA, in a reaction that is remarkable for its brevity and chutzpah, goes on to say that if there is a problem, it's the Palestinians own fault. For a more realistic account, see the BBC's report from Gaza.
Better yet, watch "Drying Up Palestine," the short documentary film on how Israel has been sucking on a long straw, digging deep under future Palestinian independent territory and depriving currently-occupied Palestinians and future "independent" Palestinians of one of the very requisites of statehood: water resources. Maybe Peter Snowdon and Rima Essa's film (you can see a clip here) should be up on the Amnesty site.
Image: AppleWorks clip art.
