The Baltimore Sun · 24 August 2023

CP-2023-056

West Bank sees uneven water crisis

Israeli settlements thrive as Palestinian farmers’ taps run dry

By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jiftlik, West Bank

Transcribed from the clipping

“JIFTLIK, West Bank — Across the dusty villages of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli water pipes don’t reach, date palms have been left to die. Greenhouses are empty and deserted. Palestinians say they can barely get enough water to bathe their children and wash their clothes — let alone sustain livestock and grow fruit trees. In sharp contrast, neighboring Jewish settlements look like oases. Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools… ‘People are thirsty,’ said Hazeh Daraghmeh, a 63-year-old Palestinian date farmer in the Jiftlik area of the valley… ‘They’re trying to squeeze us step by step.’… ‘They don’t want us to be farmers,’ Fathi Sawafta, a local council member, said of Israeli authorities. ‘They don’t want us to be self-sufficient.’…”

Context added by this archive

Two Palestinians named, with their jobs. The comparison in the deck is the Associated Press’s own: settlements thrive, taps run dry.

Cite this item

"West Bank sees uneven water crisis," The Baltimore Sun, 24 August 2023. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2023-056. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2023-056

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