Milhem
noted that in just one month, in September of last year “settlers
killed 3 Palestinians, injured 127 Palestinians, uprooted more than 8000
trees and property and cars were vandalised. 774 residential and
economic facilities were destroyed, 184 of which were funded by donors
and 959 Palestinian citizens were displaced and prevented from returning
to their homes.”
He called what has happened over decades and in that grim month of
September “a catastrophe.” And it is one that the international
community and governments have enabled with a persistent refusal to call
out Israel for flagrant violations of international laws and
conventions. As the Conservative MP Crispin Blunt told us in our 31
December, 2021 podcast:
You are not allowed to occupy someone else's territory, expel the
people who live there and then settle your own citizens on it. That is a
gross breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And I'm an ex-soldier. I
grew up in a profession where the laws of war were the most profound
laws that we had to understand and abide by and breaches of them were
the most serious matter of all. And here is a breach of the
Fourth Geneva convention; it's really grotesque that it is largely now
being ignored by much of the international community and the United
Kingdom… Israel is a signatory to these conventions.
In his presentation Milhem made the point that Area C is the most
fertile region of the West Bank and rich in natural resources. Through
illegal land seizures and annexations, the refusal to grant building
permits and the denial of water rights the Israeli authorities’
intentions are clear: drive Palestinian farmers from their land and make
that land available to the settler movement. “It is happening now and
the whole world is watching,” he said.
Israel has failed to honour its obligations under the 1993 Oslo II
interim agreement to recognise Palestinian water rights with an
understanding that “both sides recognize the necessity to develop
additional water for various uses.” And regardless of what was agreed in
the Oslo Accords, Israel as an Occupying Power must insure the basic
needs of the occupied civilian population. That includes access to
water.
A report
by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
last year noted that nearly 660,000 Palestinians in Area C have only
limited water access and of that number 480,000 are considered
vulnerable. And the commitment to an equitable share of water resources?
OCHA comments that although “Israeli authorities are responsible for
providing the agreed amount of water to Palestinian communities, Israel
today enjoys 87 percent of these shared water resources, with
Palestinians only able to access the remaining 13 percent.”
The impact in Area C is to drive Palestinian farmers into an ever-more unsustainable corner:
As a result of lack of access to public water infrastructure,
many Palestinians are forced to bring in water by truck, or to harvest
rainwater. These alternative forms of supply are expensive and/or
inefficient. For instance, the cost of water trucking can be six times
higher than the national price of 5 NIS (1.5 USD)/m3 in Area C….it is
estimated that in some Palestinian communities in Area C, water
represents 15 percent of household expenses.
The financial costs associated with accessing water are
particularly devastating for those communities reliant upon livestock
herding. For such herder communities, lack of access to water undermines
their ability to maintain their livelihood, substantially increasing
the risk of forcible transfer.
The intention of this and other tactics of the Israelis is to cripple
the economic viability of Palestinian agriculture and as Milhem argues
it is a policy rooted in a system of apartheid.
Sadly it is one that is working. He noted that in the 1970s 37% of
Palestine’s GDP lay in agricultural production. By 2021 that figure had
shrunk to less than 4%. Since 1967 and the occupation Israel has seized
more than 200,000 hectares of land. Over decade, tens of billions of
dollars of revenue have been lost to Palestinian farmers as Israel
exploits West Bank agricultural land for its own coffers.
It is a shameful situation and one that Abbas Milhem says must end.
What he called the West’s policy of habitually expressing “concern and
condemnation” has achieved nothing. It is time to “move from the level
of condemnation to the level of taking action.” Apartheid in South
Africa was broken by “solidarity, boycott and actions.” Without such
similar action “the suffering of the Palestinians will continue.”