Whenever I try to mouth these words [of reassurance for Israel], a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit.
Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.
Standing near one of these long, stinking brown-and-yellow rivers of waste recently, the local chief medical officer, Dr Bassam Said Nadi, explained to me: "Recently there were very heavy rains, and the shit started to flow into the reservoir that provides water for this whole area. I knew that if we didn't act, people would die. We had to alert everyone not to drink the water for over a week, and distribute bottles. We were lucky it was spotted. Next time..." He shook his head in fear. This is no freak: a 2004 report by Friends of the Earth found that only six per cent of Israeli settlements adequately treat their sewage.
Well, Herr Johann, who's in the shit now?
Gaza sewage pumped into the sea over past three months
Millions of liters of sewage have been released over the past three months into the Mediterranean Sea from the Gaza Strip, according to a new United Nations report.
According to the report, an estimated 50-60 million liters of waste have been pumped into the sea. This was done in an effort to prevent an overflow of sewage in residential areas.
The report prepared by Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) raises concerns that the untreated sewage is carrying Escherichia coli (e. coli) bacteria into the sea which may affect those swimming in its waters.
E. coli bacteria can cause infection in the urinary tract and the digestive system.
The authors of the report also wrote that in areas where the sewage is pumped into the sea, the color of the water is dark brown and a strong odor emanates.
Fishermen in Gaza bay claim the sewage has killed much of the fish in the area.
Officials in the Gaza Strip said there were also concerns that the pumping station in the Zeitun area would not be able to handle the sewage that had accumulated and the treatment pools would overflow.
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10 comments:
What kind of logic is that to bring a quote from an article describing sewage from the settlements flowing into the Palestinian lands and aquifer, then to quote an article about Gazan sewage flowing into the sea as some twisted sort of rebuttal!?
If you wanted to show that the Gazans live in shit (” Well, Herr Johann, who's in the shit now?”) then, well, all the world knows that already; and the main culprit for that is actually Israel and the Western governments that support the unjust - and, if only that, but also self-defeating - blockade which is a cruel collective punishment of these people for choosing Hamas in the monster-fuck that were the elections imposed on them by Israel’s greatest friend Dubya (verily, with friends like this, who needs enemies?)
But, seriously, I don’t understand, what do you think about the settler’s sewage flowing into the Palestinian lands? Forget about the sewage in Gaza, the bombing of Dresden and other such unrelated thing. You are presented with an alleged fact of wrongdoing on your side: what is your reply?
Not the Gazans. That's a known. I was referring to Herr Johann. He's in it.
The "settlers'" sewerage doesn't overflow into Pal. locations. (I am not referring to this) nor this. Check here.
Yisrael, what do your first two links have to do with the topic? One is about how ”despite modern marvels such as the space toilet, much of the world still endures a medieval level of sanitation” and about some sanitation innovation in Pakistan. Another is about rainwater leaking into manholes in Milwaukee, for Chrissake, thus increasing load of treatment plants and about how the communities there settled with the Attorney General of Wisconsin and are actually going to fix the freaking manholes. Thanks for making me read those. Now what does it have to do with the alleged ” sewage <…> pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land”?
Next, you say that it is Hari that is bad (“in shit”) and bring an article attacking him. The only critique of him I could sort of consider objective was for him using a quote "‘I support compulsory transfer ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war", attributed to Ben Gurion, but which Benny Morris claims to be a fake in its second part only, as if the first part wasn’t bad enough (ironically, the people attacking Hari now embrace Morris and rely on his assertion that the quote is a fake, while, of course, if asked about his research that made him the darling of the left back in the 90’s, they’ll find plenty of reasons to discredit it; but nowadays he almost became a darling of the right wing, because of the racist rants he allows himself to spew: “look, a leftist talking like Kahane!”) All the rest of the criticism is not about the facts at all, but about his opinion of what he sees on the ground and describes. (This is the same sort of criticism that Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer endure: not about the facts that they bring - only every once in a while about some minor inaccuracies - but about their opinion of the Israeli behavior.) Only this passage tries to deal with the facts:
In a modern day "poisoning the wells" libel, Hari accuses Israel of sole responsibility for polluting West Bank groundwater supplies. It is no secret that Israel has a chronic water problem and lags behind many other developed nations in environmental protection. However, the Palestinians are equally to blame for polluting the environment in the West Bank, which has, in turn, also caused damage to Israel's own water supplies. The West Bank mountain aquifer is one of the largest freshwater sources supplying both Israelis and Palestinians. Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have jointly tackled such pollution and Israel has used its own expertise to provide Palestinian population centers with sewage treatment facilities. Why would Israel purposely destroy its own limited water supply?
While tacitly admitting that there is something bad going on with water pollution in the WB, it swiftly shifts the topic to ” Hari accuses Israel of sole responsibility for polluting West Bank groundwater supplies”. What the hell? Isn’t Israel in charge of the West Bank? Listen, you cannot eat the pie and have it too. If you are occupying (or liberating, whatever) this territory at least have the decency to accept the full responsibility for what is going on under your control. But at least this passage is trying to somehow deal with the facts and even brings some sources as to what is being done (which, I wish, you did.)
My problem with Israeli apologists is that whenever there is any accusation, however just, against their side, their first reaction is not to check whether the accusation is correct and, if possible, rebut it, but to try to discredit the accuser or to look for excuses or change the subject altogether. I’ve seen it several times on your blog (like with this post, for example) and, guess what, it doesn’t look good. It looks exactly like you’re trying to equivocate instead of addressing the issues. How much nobler it would have been if you said: “there is indeed such a problem that is caused because of so and so, and such and such things are being done to address the issue.”
Regarding "Israel is in control". For the benefit of those not as educated or opinionated as Peter (who is having a ball with the comments section - I can't respond to all, my fingers hurt - but I do read), Israel has been quite seriously hamstrung in what it can or cannot do in the disputed territories due to conflicts with UNRWA and other bodies. And now with the PA in place for the last almost 15 years, matters of sewerage, wells, garbage sites, etc. have become nigh unmanageable. And that's the truth.
Found this:
"In 1994, I interviewed the chief Israeli negotiator of the Water Treaty between Jordan and Israel. I noticed a newspaper quote about the water negotiations from Yaacov Tsemach of the national water company, Tahal. It caught my eye because a Yaacov Tsemach was my really good, longtime army buddy. I admired his sharp wit and, a rarity among Israelis, great sense of humor. So I called Tahal and to my total delight, it was my buddy on the line.
We arranged to meet and got along like old times. He was assistant to the chief negotiator of the water sections of the then-building, Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty. I asked if I could interview the negotiator and he said he'd put in a good word for me. Well, a good word from Yaacov did the trick. If I agreed to keep the negotiator's name anonymous, he would meet with me within the week.
We met at a Tel Aviv restaurant and he began, like all good bureaucrats, handing me graphs and surveys. In retrospect, I've wondered why I brought out so many sources, but the truth must be, the rest of the media were selling "peace" and I was looking where they chose not to enter. The bar graphs showed a lot of blue above the "red" line of the lake over 30 odd years before the Treaty, then it sunk after the proposed "peace" agreement. I, naturally, asked what happened.
The negotiator ordered a drink, then shortly after, another. And he became teary.
"I sure hope our leaders know what they're doing," he said. "Because if they're wrong, the Kinneret will disappear in a generation. Within twenty years, it will be nearly useless for our water needs."
I asked what he meant. He then gave me the title of my Gemini article, "Giving Away Dream Water."
"The government is going to give away 50 million cubic meters of lake water a year and they ordered me to find it. I'm giving away dream water."
The negotiator told me where he went looking for the water. "There are brackish streams on the west of the lake. We'll give that away. We'll dam the Yarmuk and give that water away. But it was supposed to flow into the system anyway. There is no water to give away. Not even 5 million cubic meters. The government is so anxious to sign the Treaty with Jordan that it's accepting all their arguments. The truth is the Kinneret is our lake. They have no claim on it."
The seriousness of the man's dilemma became more obvious as I walked him to his car. "You think 50 million cubic meters is nothing. And it is in one year, provided it's replenished the following year. But 50 million compounded year after year will suck the lake dry in one generation, after staying stable for millennia. Just don't write that I killed our lake."
And still, the writers from Israel report on dry winters and hot springs as the cause of the upcoming disaster. One of the real killers of the lake is currently President of the State. Remember him with deep emotion when your tap runs dry."
For the benefit of those not as educated or opinionated as Peter (who is having a ball with the comments section - I can't respond to all, my fingers hurt - but I do read)
LOL, well, I hope you don’t mind. And I am surprised, that notwithstanding “those” others you are addressing, this blog is too much of Yisrael Medad's “thoughts, assertions and observations on issues (etcetera)” - but “the rest is silence” :))
(I have to add that I, to my chagrin and shame, not for a second pretend to be well educated about the conflict. I am opinionated, for sure, but there are gradations to everything, and I think I can still consider myself to be somewhere in the middle. For some people Uri Avnery is not left enough and Avigdor Liberman is not right enough, oy wey…)
Regarding your first comment, I am still a bit puzzled how Israel can be "hamstrung" with regard to the sewage flowing from the settlements? Anyway, if there is a good justifiable reason, let the world hear it. You can write about it on your blog, instead of summarily of attacking Hari, and will look only better for it. You can even consider writing to him about it. I, for one, definitely want to hear the whole truth, if only to have a better argument against Israel-bashers.
Regarding the second comment (the water story) - seems a bit unrelated here, but does bring about some musings. First, with such seemingly intractable conflicts as the Israeli-Palestinian one starts suspecting at some point that the conflict might be really not entirely about what what it superficially seems: for example, that it's not only about the territories, the settlements or the right of return - terribly hard, but ultimately solvable problems - but also about resources, such as water. I definitely think that could be the case but I know too little about it. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that we cannot find a solution to giving water to the Jordanians. And why the hell cannot we finally build the desalination plants that are always so talked about during the dry years and then disappear from the public awareness once we get a good rainy one? Do we cry about water shortage because we're too incompetent and negligent to actually do something about it?
Lastly, if only Jordanians were to blame. The natural wonder - the Dead Sea - is going to disappear in the next several decades because the Jordan River is reduced to a pathetic trickle by our kibbutzim and moshavim, that are still getting generous subsidies and waste water like there is no tomorrow, to the best of my knowledge. I'll gladly stand corrected on this one and will research more if I get the chance.
How about printing this?
Basically, Israel gets money for not destroying the Gaza greenhouses, then shuts the water off and kills them. This is what is called adding insult to injury. Wonder why don't like us around the world!
Try this, Peter: "September 14, 2005, 12:57 AM (GMT+02:00):
Gazan Palestinians ravaged their own fledgling economic infrastructure. Looters made off with the greenhouses, supposed to have given 14,000 Palestinians a living" and this
"Palestinians set synagogue ablaze in former Gaza settlement
Haaretz
Aluf Benn and Amos Harel
September 12, 2005
Palestinians moved into the abandoned Gaza Strip settlement of Morag before dawn on Monday after Israel Defense Forces troops pulled out of the area and set the synagogue on fire. Huge flames leapt into the sky.
In another synagogue, gunmen climbed on the roof and waved flags of militant groups, including Hamas, shouting "God is great."
You forgot to bring sources, but nevermind. I believe the stories. Again, they do nothing to disprove my point. Talking about "fledgling economic infrastructure" in reference to starved, blockaded Gaza is grotesque. And I could not care less if some thugs or merely angry people set ablaze an empty building.
On the other hand Israel was asked to keep all the settler houses intact to allow some resettlement of Gazan refugees but viciously and in cold blood destroyed them. In the story I brought Israel showed again that there are no limits to Israeli chutzpah: taking money from well meaning donors from around the world and then in the most despicable and low manner to destroy the greenhouses... I'm speechless and, if it could be of any consolation, only hope that it was a result of stupid neglect and mistake rather than a deliberate action. Israel at least should have enough decency to return the money to Economic Cooperation Foundation, but chances for that are slim...
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