Marking World Water Day, President Mahmoud Abbas said today that it is not possible to remain silent about the hidden and dangerous, and almost complete, Israeli looting of our water resources.
The international community is required to devote this year’s slogan, “Groundwater is invisible, but its impact is visible everywhere”, by working to support us to restore our water rights, he said.
President Abbas stressed that the difficult circumstances and Israeli obstacles will not prevent us from implementing our plans, and we will continue the development process and support more projects to build an independent water system as a basis for life and development, leading to the establishment of our state with Jerusalem as its capital.
He wondered: “How long will the world remain silent about the fate and life of our Palestinian people being held hostage by the (Israeli) occupier through its racist practices and its control over our resources and our legitimate rights?”
He pointed out that this occasion is a very important opportunity for everyone to show an interest in this precious resource, and to think seriously about solutions to the serious issues that threaten the availability of fresh water on Earth and threaten the human existence of tens of millions of people.
“The world, as it discusses these issues, should not ignore the importance of finding just solutions to the issue of water that our people suffer from, which is exacerbated daily by the occupation’s persistence in its violations, its continued looting of our water resources, and its obstruction of all efforts aimed at providing water to our citizens as a basic human right guaranteed by all international laws and covenants,” stressed President Abbas.
This year’s slogan, he added, “should expose the extent of the hidden Israeli violations of our water rights. The world should realize the dangers of the water war waged by the occupiers against us for decades, which has reached the level of war crimes, through its systematic targeting of the infrastructure and the repeated brutal aggression on Gaza, whose people are already suffering from a suffocating siege that made them suffer daily from difficult living conditions at all levels, the most recent of which was the aggression of last May, which caused severe damage to water and sanitation services, and greatly affected the great achievements of the Water Authority to remedy the catastrophic water situation there.”
“The situation in the West Bank is not better,” added President Abbas. “The occupation controls the water sources below and above the ground. To this day, the greed of the occupation in our land and water is still the basis for illegal settlement expansion and its violations on the ground are still repeated and increasing to demonstrate what leaves no room for doubt about Israeli discrimination. At a time when Israel is digging underground wells and constructing projects in settlements, and huge water lines that devour Palestinian land, disregarding all laws and resolutions of international legitimacy, it demolishes and obstructs by force the drilling of simple water wells serving Palestinian communities suffering from a lack of water to force us, in front of the growing population, to buy water from it in order to provide the needs of our people in a way that serve its political agendas.”
He added: “The question here is, how long will the world remain silent in the face of the fate and life of our people being held hostage by the occupation? Through its control over our capabilities and our water rights in particular and national rights in general? And for how long will the occupation continue its violations without the slightest respect for the laws and resolutions of international legitimacy?”
“On this occasion, we affirm that if the world continues to be content with denouncing the almost complete Israeli looting of our water resources, the future of our children will be thirst, and this cannot be tolerated.”
