Palestinians In Hebron Need Water Army Trucks Make Deliveries As Shortage Hampers Talks
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the military government in the West Bank to find an immediate solution Sunday to a water shortage that has left Palestinian homes in Hebron without running water.
Army tankers trucked water into the city later Sunday, and officials said more would be brought today. Privately owned tankers will be hired to help in the effort, they said.
Residents said 70 percent of the homes in Hebron had no running water and there was a one-week wait to receive water from city trucks.
Palestinian youths drew water from wells and carried plastic buckets to their homes Sunday, while truckers hauled water around the city and sold it at a price of about a dollar for 12 gallons.
The water shortage first drew the attention of Israelis over the weekend, when television contrasted scenes of dried-up pipes with pictures of Jewish settlers in nearby Kiryat Arba swimming in pools and tending lush gardens.
“Water hasn’t reached my house for two months,” said vegetable peddler Fahme Abu Sneneh, a father of seven. “Everything is for the settlers and we have to suffer.”
The tug-of-war over water, the Middle East’s most precious resource, is one of the most difficult issues left in the PLO-Israel talks on expanding Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank.
Israel gets more than a third of its water from the West Bank, which it captured from Jordan in 1967, and insists on retaining control over springs there even after Palestinian autonomy begins. The Palestinians want water sources to be handed over to them.
Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natche accused the Israelis of taking more than their share of the water and of charging Palestinians 20 times more for the water than the settlers are charged. He said Hebron residents needed 2-1/2 times the amount of water Israel was giving them.
“Water is coming to Hebron, but the problem is the network there, the distribution,” Amos Epstein, director of the Mekorot water company, told Israel radio. He said half of Hebron’s water was lost in leaks and theft.