Palestinians Forbidden from Collecting Rainwater Because It's Deemed 'Israeli Property'?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/palestinians-forbidden-collecting-rainwater-because-221200562.html

The protracted, often bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which exploded into a hot war on Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and Israel retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip, dates back to the early 20th century. It began when British authorities facilitated the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine to establish a Jewish homeland, which ultimately led to the forcible displacement of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist military forces to make way for the modern state of Israel. In the current Israel-Hamas war, more than 11,000 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, had been killed as of Nov. 10, and the internet is rife with war-related misinformation, which Snopes is dedicated to countering with facts and context. You can help. Read our latest fact checks about the ongoing conflict. Submit questionable rumors you’ve encountered. Become a Snopes Member to support our work. We welcome your participation and feedback.

In November 2023, as Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, a number of posts drew attention to the challenges faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, in particular regarding Israeli control over water access.

A post on Reddit claimed that according to a 2011 United Nations (U.N.) report, “[A] Palestinian living in the West bank doesn't have the right to collect rainwater or build a well on HIS LAND because rain water is an 'Israeli property'.” An X post claimed, “Rainwater is the property of 'Israel'. Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rainwater” and appeared to quote a U.N. report as well.

We also received questions from readers, asking if Palestinians were indeed forbidden by Israeli authorities from gathering rainwater for “domestic and agricultural needs.”

The above claims were taken from a real report by independent human rights organizations submitted to a U.N. body in 2011, which found that Palestinians in the West Bank were not able to gather rainwater for their needs. Titled, “Israel’s violations of human rights regarding water and sanitation in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories]” the report is considered a non-U.N. document, however. It was written by the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), a coalition of almost 30 organizations working in the water and sanitation sector in the occupied Palestinian territory, and Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. It was submitted in September 2011 to the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), a body of independent experts in the U.N.

The report referred to a specific Israeli military order in 2009 that stated rainwater was the property of Israel (emphasis ours):

[...] in July 2009, Israeli military forces issued stop-work and/or demolition orders on cisterns being constructed in the village of Tuwani, even though the villagers of Tuwani faced a severe water shortage on account of the drought, increasingly stringent Israeli restrictions on movement necessary to gather tankered water, and attacks on water resources and infrastructure by Israeli settlers. If constructed, these cisterns would have significantly eased the water crisis for the people of Tuwani. However, according to Israeli military orders in effect in the area, rain is the property of the Israeli authorities and thus Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain water for domestic or agricultural needs. In 2010, Israel approved the construction of a filling point in the village of Tuwani that alleviated the problem of water availability in the village even though the capacity of the filling point was significantly below the capacity requested by humanitarian agencies (less than 1/4th) in order to serve surrounding villages, which are considered as the cluster of communities most at risk of water scarcity in the West Bank.

The findings of the above report echo another finding from a 2017 Amnesty International report titled, “The Occupation of Water.” Per the report, in 1967 Israeli military authorities consolidated complete power over all water resources and water-related infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territories. Military Order 158 required that all Palestinians get a permit from the Israeli military before constructing any new water installation. Since then, any extraction of water and water infrastructure development has had to go through Israel, which has resulted in “devastating” consequences for the Palestinians there, according to Amnesty.

The Amnesty report also stated (emphasis ours):

[The Palestinians] are unable to drill new water wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, in addition to being denied access to the Jordan River and fresh water springs. Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army. As a result, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to [humanitarian agency] OCHA. Even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry.

A 2016 Al Jazeera English report found that Palestinian villages in the West Bank received water supplies for only two hours in a week. While Israel implemented a policy of water cuts each summer, it had reached a higher peak that year. Israeli officials, however, said the authorities provided equal amounts of water in Israel and Palestinian territories.

snip