Khayrya Rasas, an adviser to Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet leader Rami Hamdallah, on Monday accused Israel of deliberately targeting and restricting Palestinian rights to water by controlling more than 85 percent of the region’s water resources.
Rasas further claimed that Israel denies the right to water from Palestinian landowners and allows “the settlers” to consume water at a level seven times higher than Palestinian consumption.
She added that the Joint Water Committee for Israel and the Palestinians is one of the obstacles preventing the development of the water sector because it is inactive, and because it conditions the approval of projects on an agreement to projects related to the “settlements”.
In addition, she accused Israel of destroying wells or preventing their excavation, all within the framework of a deliberate policy aimed at preventing and limiting Palestinian access to the natural resources that are one of the foundations of sovereignty and independence.
Israel and the PA just last year signed an agreement to renew the activity of the Joint Water Committee, which was created in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords with the purpose of managing water and sewage related infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.
Israel consistently assists the PA economically, even as PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas regularly blames Israel for the PA’s financial woes while spending six percent of the PA’s annual budget to pay $4.5 million a month to jailed terrorists.