[Peace-discuss] Gaza Water Crisis: Political Solution Needed, not a Technological One

[David Green]

Story Transcript

GREG WILPERT: It’s The Real News Network, and I’m Greg Wilpert, joining you
from Baltimore.

One of the most acute sources of suffering for the 2 million inhabitants of
the Gaza Strip is the contaminated drinking water situation. The RAND
Corporation, a conservative organization that promotes neoliberal policies
and that usually takes very pro-Israeli positions, just published a
detailed report about the water crisis in Gaza. One of the authors of the
report is a former Israeli soldier. It is, thus, surprising that the Rand
Corporation would report on a catastrophe that Israeli policies have caused
and that prevents 2 million Palestinians from living a normal life. The
findings in the report are very grim, and they warn that unsatisfactory
sanitation in Gaza due to contaminated water could cause widespread disease
which could spread into Israel and into Egypt.

Last month, the BBC aired a short report on the power situation in Gaza.
Here’s a segment of that report.

BBC REPORT: Our children suffer to get a bottle of water. The main water
isn’t drinkable. If we don’t have money, they take containers to a communal
water supply.

The electricity problem means in every 24 hours we get only 3 or 4 hours.
When we get electricity, we plug in our mobile phones, the water pump, and
charge the batteries so we can use it for lights when the power is cut.

GREG WILPERT: Already more than a quarter of all disease in Gaza is caused
directly by contaminated water, surpassing any other cause of disease in
the Gaza Strip. Another report on the water situation in Gaza with the
title False Promises for Gaza was just published by This Week in Palestine.
It warns that reports on the water crisis in Gaza such as the one by the
Rand Corporation tend to have sensationalist headlines, but do not deal
with the complexity of the problem. The author of the report, Clemens
Messerschmid, joins us today. Clemens is a hydrogeologist who has been
living and work in Ramallah since 1997. Thanks for being here, Clemens.

CLEMENS MESSERSCHMID: Hello. Thank you for having me.

GREG WILPERT: Your article warns about one-liner headlines that often
accompany reports by international organizations on Gaza, such as the World
Health Organization report which warned that Gaza will become unlivable by
2020. If these headlines draw attention to human suffering in Gaza, what is
wrong with them?

CLEMENS MESSERSCHMID: Drawing attention to human suffering is very good.
Whether you do it the correct way is the question. Claiming that Gaza will
become uninhabitable by 2020 is wrong from two sides. On the one hand, why
2020? Why not ’22 or ’23? I mean, how much can people survive if it’s just
about survival?

On the other hand, Gaza has long stopped being inhabitable, if we talk
about any degree of decency for human life, even the most basic degree of
decency. And the most terrible feature for daily life in Gaza is, of
course, the lack of any perspective under the current regime, under the
current tight blockade, any prospective- any future. So in that respect,
gaza has long become uninhabitable.

GREG WILPERT: You also argue that desalinisation in Gaza is not the answer
for the water crisis. Why not? What is the answer?

CLEMENS MESSERSCHMID: Well, maybe we should first start with the Rand
report, because it has a very long shopping list of interventions proposed
and planned. And what strikes me is that I’ve seen 25 reports like that
before over the past 20 years. And this report comes along giving detailed
recommendations on what to do in wastewater, in water, on the pipes, the
infrastructure, and so on, just as if there was no blockade. As if it
wasn’t impossible to do any step of normal work, of any normal functioning,
under this blockade. So they depoliticised, they blend out the real cause
and the real trouble of the situation, and focus instead- and that is very,
very common in the water sector, in water projects in Palestine- focus
instead on technical fixes, technical solutions, and claim, indeed, that
this is simply not possible.

GREG WILPERT: Tell us specifically about the desalinisation. What is the
issue there?

CLEMENS MESSERSCHMID: Desalinization, or desalination, is a proposal that
dates back 25 years to the very beginning of Oslo. Immediately upon signing
the Oslo agreements, especially Oslo II agreements in 1995, Israel started
claiming now Gaza should desalinate. And that is for a very simple reason.
Israel was never willing to, and isn’t willing, to share the water of the
country, as a whole, with Palestinians. Israel follows the simple logic
what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is ours, or is even mine as well. Israel
doesn’t want to share water. So their solution to the problem was Gaza
shall look after itself. Gaza shall look for other sources of water. Not
water shared with Israel. That is the principle problematic from the point
of view of of water rights, Palestinian water rights, which is a historic
struggle for over 100 years now.

Now, this logic has been picked up recently by Palestinian Authority in the
West Bank, and even more recently by donor states and donor conferences,
like this spring the Union for the Mediterranean has decided to build a
huge desalination plant in Gaza, a central plant with 55 million cubic
meters of desalinated water per year. What is the problem with that
proposal? Well one is the technical problem. Desalination will not work
under a blockade, and will be unaffordably expensive for Gazans. The other
problem is the principal political approach, because the Rand Report and
all these interventions, and also the logic of desalination, is banked on
one idea, trying to make Gaza independent, autonomous.

And this is a fallacy. A principled fallacy. Gaza is not a country. Gaza
actually happens to have the size, the area, of my hometown, Munich, and
about the same population of my hometown. Gaza is a typical city, 362
square kilometers, and about double the population density of Baltimore,
where you are sitting.

Gaza is just a city. There is no city on earth that can supply itself. Gaza
cannot supply itself, will not supply itself, and should not supply itself.
Just imagine you sit in Baltimore, and you will never be able to reach
Washington or any of the lakes and reservoirs around your city. How on
earth do you want to become water independent within the confines of the
city? This is a wrong approach that only serves Israeli interest. In the
words of Rabin, Yitzhak Rabin, may Gaza just sink into the sea. We don’t
want to know about it. We don’t want to hear about it. We don’t want to
have anything to do with it.

This is cutting any lifeline, cutting any perspective for a actually
normally inhabited city on earth.

GREG WILPERT: Well, thank you so much. This is a very important point that
you are making, I think, about the situation of Gaza, and we’ll certainly
continue to follow it like we always do. I was speaking to our Clemens
Messerschmid, a hydrogeologist who is normally based in Ramallah, but is
talking to us today from Germany. Thanks again, Clemens, for having joined
us today.

CLEMENS MESSERSCHMID: Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.
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