Piping water to Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley

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Updates: November 2009 / January 2010 / March 2010 / April 2010

Throughout the Jordan Valley there’s a growing movement of communities using direct action to challenge Israel’s illegal occupation.

Through collective resistance they’ve constructed homes, schools, a football pitch, and playgrounds. Now they are constructing a water pipe!

We urgently need to raise money to support this project. If you are able to make a donation, or help to organise fundraising events, then please get in touch, or go to our donate page.

What’s the plan?

We will run water pipes for 14km from a well in a Palestinian olive grove (the location of which will remain secret for now) along a valley to four isolated Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley. The project is being led by local Palestinians with the support of international solidarity groups, including Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group.

What will we achieve?

• easy and affordable access to clean water for Bedouin communities
• support for grassroots Palestinian communities who are using non-violent direct action to stay on the land they have lived on for generations
• direct challenging of Israel’s attempt to control water and land in the Jordan Valley
• increased awareness and action in support of Palestinian Bedouin communities

Why water?

Palestinians living in parts of the West Bank designated as Area C* are subject to Israeli military law. They have to seek permission from the Israeli Civil Military Administration to construct, renovate or repair any building, water well or reservoir, road, playground or other structure. Israel uses this permit system to make the life of Palestinians as hard as possible, and 94% of permit applications are refused. Therefore Bedouin families throughout the Jordan Valley have to collect all their water with tractors and mobile tanks, often having their tanks delayed at checkpoints, or confiscated by the Israeli army.

They are left with a very limited choice: accept the racist apartheid law and controls imposed on them, or find ways to challenge and circumvent it.

Why aren’t the big charities doing this work?

This project will support the resistance of local communities who are working together, using non violent direct action to challenge Israel’s occupation of their land. It is about a lot more than charity.
Because providing running water to these communities is deemed ‘illegal’ under Israeli law, the big charities and NGO’s don’t feel that they can support it.

Won’t the Israelis just steal the pipes?

When Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group was set up in 2006 the beacon of direct action in the Jordan Valley was Al Jiftlik School – built with tents without permission. Once Al Jiftlik school gained the international recognition it needed to get funding for a modern two storey building it was too embarrassing for Israel to attempt injunctions or demolitions.

This was followed by Fasayil school, which started as a 2 room mud brick building in 2007. When Israel issued an injunction for the building work to stop, an international campaign and petition were launched – Israel backed down. The school now has 9 classrooms and is an inspiration to other communities in the area.

There is now a strong network of local activists working on the ground, supported by international solidarity groups. They are creating their own ‘facts on the ground’ by:

• reconstructing demolished houses with mud bricks
• levelling the land to build football pitches and playgrounds
• fighting against demolition orders in the Israeli courts (and winning!)
• building schools in three more Bedouin communities
• organising volunteers to bring support and supplies when homes are destroyed by the Israeli army
• constructing roads to connect Palestinian communities

Every month there are new ideas for non violent direct action that will actually benefit the local people.

Every time we start a new project we wonder if it will succeed. But because local communities did not let such doubts get in their way, we are now celebrating the construction of the schools in Al Jiftlik and Fasayil, the football pitch in Al Zubeidat, children’s playgrounds in Al Hadidiya, and many other successes.

For Palestinians there is no choice. To not act is to accept the occupation. We celebrate every success, and if a project doesn’t work we replan, or move straight on to the next.

Why the Jordan Valley?

When you travel through the Jordan Valley on the occupied West Bank you see lush green Israeli settlement farms of date palms, citrus, herbs and vegetables next to impoverished Palestinian villages and farms with their small parched fields, and shrivelled crops. The illegal Israeli settlements have clean piped water, sometimes even swimming pools, while many Palestinian villages have no water supply at all.

Israel’s stated plan is to annex the Jordan Valley into the Israeli state. To this end it is engaged in a program of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population in the Jordan Valley. Israel already controls 95% of the land and 98% of the water in this vast but largely unknown area of the West Bank. This fertile land is divided between ** settlements and a network of army bases and closed military zones. By denying the 15,000 Palestinians access to the basics of life (water, land, health care and schools) they are exerting a constant pressure on them to leave.

How can people in Brighton and the UK support the project?

The Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group aims to:

• raise around £5000 to help pay for the pipes, solar pumps, valves and bulldozer hire
• keep in regular contact with our Palestinian friends, and be ready to act if the Israeli army tries to stop the project through injunctions, demolitions, or threats
• produce reports and press releases
• organise petitions, lobbying, or other support that is needed

If you can help with any of these tasks – please get in touch! At this stage we are particularly keen to make contact with people who can organise fundraising events to kickstart the project.

Water resources in the Jordan Valley: the facts

Since it occupied the Palestinian West bank in 1967, Israel has confiscated, monopolized, destroyed and exhausted the area’s water resources, and implemented a series of policies to create extreme water shortages for Palestinians.

The Jordan Valley is rich is water reserves as it is situated over the Eastern Water Basin, but Palestinians are only permitted to use 40% of the water in this basin. All water resources are now owned and controlled by the Israeli water company Mekorot.

Overall, Israeli settlers use about six times more water than the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.

Israel has:

• destroyed 162 Palestinian irrigation projects – they claimed they were closed for ‘security purposes.’ Israel has also destroyed wide areas of irrigated fields, denying thousands of Palestinians their only source of income—agriculture—and prohibiting any further development or maintenance of the wells
• prevented Palestinians from using their share of 250 million cubic meters of the Jordan River, destroying Palestinian agricultural projects along the banks which are now fenced off and inaccessible to Palestinian farmers. It is draining excessive amounts of river and wadi water to feed the huge reservoir lakes it has built to supply the illegal Jewish settlements
• controlled underground water and dug wells at critical depths, which hit the salt beds and cause the water to be salty
• dug new Jewish-only wells near Palestinian springs, drying out or using much of the Palestinian water. In the past, these wells served the Palestinians with 6 million cubic meters per year, but now Palestinians must buy water at huge expense from Mekorot
• closed most areas that have a good water supply for military zones or natural reserves where Palestinians are not allowed to go
• forbidden Palestinians from digging new wells, or improving old wells. This means that the Palestinian wells are shallow and derelict
• rationed the amount of water Palestinians can use - Israel measures the amount of water used by the Palestinians and imposes fines on those who exceed the allocated amount
• allowed settlement sewage to seep into Palestinian wells and springs
• forbidden the Palestinians from access to the water, minerals and shores of the Dead Sea. Israel has exhausted the waters of the Dead Sea and it is gradually drying up