USAID Cuts Leave West Bank Water Supply High and Dry

DURA OCCUPIED WEST BANK As just now as Christmas this small region near Hebron thought it had a deal with the United States to tackle one of its preponderance pressing issues water supply In December Dura joined the municipalities of Halhul and Hebron to sign a memorandum with the U S Agency for International Evolution to fund a million operation shoring up their local water systems It was a project of tremendous local import The three neighboring communities are among the preponderance water-deprived in the West Bank They rely on irregular water supplies from Israel When water does arrive selected - percent is lost in distribution chiefly due to leaks and theft It s this - percent that the project meant to fix But in late February a month after President Donald Trump s inauguration it was terminated A State Department spokesperson disclosed by email that it was determined to not fit within the standards laid out by Sec Marco Rubio for U S foreign assistance which must make the United States stronger safer or more prosperous Since taking office Trump with the help of Elon Musk has eviscerated the U S foreign aid budget In March Rubio terminated percent of USAID programs after a review by Musk s Department of Leadership Efficiency The administration also revealed foreign aid would be shrunk and reconstituted under the State Department On July USAID formally dissolved The consequences of this retrenchment will land on Palestinian communities like Dura which for decades have counted on the U S as the preeminent funder of water infrastructure in the Occupied Territories The water supply for Palestinians in the West Bank is already tight While Israelis consume an average - liters per day comparable to Americans the West Bank average is liters an average that masks gigantic differences between the haves in well-supplied areas and the have-nots A number of critical water projects in Palestinian population centers have been abandoned because of USAID s collapse In Jericho USAID was funding work to connect thousands of homes to sewer lines for the first time Not only is the work unfinished but the municipality has also had to reach into its own pocket to repave the roads that American taxpayers paid to dig up In Tulkarem where USAID was improving wastewater services for a region in desperate need of them the sudden stop to work means sewage continues to build up in nearby lagoons breeding mosquitoes Subhi Samhan director of research and advancement at the Palestinian Water Authority called the abrupt pullout catastrophic There s no other actor in the context right now to fill the gap noted a humanitarian worker who works in the region but requested anonymity to avoid Israeli or American retaliation against their organization s work There s no Plan B on this In another part of the West Bank Al-Auja Spring is shown almost fully dried up by Israeli forces in Jericho on May Photo Issam Rimawi Anadolu Getty Images That s evident in Dura a hilly neighborhood of about people on the outskirts of Hebron Unlike several places in the West Bank Dura has no wells or reservoirs Its primary water supply is a single -inch pipe It s operated by the Palestinian Water Authority but the actual water comes from Mekorot Israel s national water company according to Dura municipal administrators They requested anonymity to speak freely Since occupying the West Bank in Israel has also controlled the majority of its water support The Palestinian Liberation Organization signed agreements with Israel for rights to a fixed volume from the land s main aquifer in the s but the Palestinian population in the West Bank has grown percent since then making this share increasingly inadequate Related Israeli Parliament Votes for Making Apartheid Official Fetterman I Haven t Been Following It In much of the West Bank Israeli functionaries keep a tight grip on Palestinian efforts to build wells reservoirs pipelines or any other infrastructure In the current era West Bankers buy percent of their household water supplies from Israeli water companies according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics In Dura the water in the pipe is neither reliable nor sufficient for local demands The municipality stores what they get in tanks then parcels it around the city on a rotating published schedule Residents often gripe to the municipality about the meager flows The reality is our water supply is not enough for our requirements a Dura official disclosed The average Dura resident consumes about liters per day falling short of the - liters that s sufficient according to World Vitality Organization experts to meet water demands the greater part of the time But when supplies are limited people s usage can drop as low as liters per day The USAID project planned among other things to shore up the kilometers of pipe that make up Dura s water grid It was hoped that by plugging leaks and reducing theft the city could sell more water the legal way strengthening its own finances In principle this would also spare Dura residents from buying triple-priced private water supplies or just going without Read our complete coverage Israel s War on Gaza Water has long been a pillar of America s protocol in the Occupied Territories From to the U S spent billion in aid in the West Bank and Gaza with about a third of that going to the category of economic upsurge and infrastructure like water Dave Harden a former mission director for USAID in the West Bank and Gaza reckons the agency spent possibly hundreds of millions on water and sanitation projects since the Oslo Agreements of the s The U S was well aware that water was choking Palestinian progress A State Department review on the territories funding weather since removed listed water insecurity among the the majority immediate impediment s for the Palestinian financial sector As president Joe Biden echoed the longtime U S foreign approach consensus when he argued that improving Palestinian living conditions could bolster advocacy for the Palestinian Authority and improve chances for a sustainable two-state response Various pro-Israel groups agreed The Israel Initiative Forum a U S NGO specifically named improving the parlous conditions of water access in the West Bank as one of measures to facilitate a negotiated peace Related Israel Used U S Weapons to Destroy U S Assets and Aid Projects in Gaza In the West Bank and Gaza USAID has paid for dozens of wells and hundreds of miles of pipelines It s built reservoirs storage tanks and sewage infrastructure As of USAID claimed to have improved clean water access for million Palestinians While countless countries fund water infrastructure in the Palestinian territories none match the financial heft of the U S reported Samhan of the Palestinian Water Authority Largest part of the projects funded by USAID are major projects Not all countries can organize these funds USAID can do million at once he revealed Yet despite decades of work by the U S and other donors the scope of need remains astronomical Leaky water infrastructure is a common obstacle throughout the West Bank The World Bank estimates that if the West Bank recovered all of its lost water it would amount to boosting total supply by around percent Urged what they plan to do now that the USAID money is gone Dura officers took a laconic attitude saying they hope to find a European funder What galls multiple Palestinians is the sense that while they scrounge for water their Israeli neighbors have plenty Water shortages are reshaping the West Bank countryside Water insecurity is among the compounding pressures forcing people to leave rural areas for crowded miserable conditions in cities Circumstances change is putting this inequity into sharper relief Last winter precipitation levels in much of the Holy Land were about half of their historical average Conditions forecasts for the region anticipate soaring average temperatures intensifying heatwaves and nastier droughts This will likely stress water supplies as more surface water gets cooked off into the air and aquifers are less fully replenished In February Israeli President Isaac Herzog pointed to the weak winter rains and warned Israelis could experience a summer of massive natural disasters But on water Israel is well prepared It gets greater part of its drinking water from state-of-the-art desalination plants on the Mediterranean Sea It recycles much of this water after it flows through Israeli homes into its ultra-efficient agricultural sector Its water grid has one of the world s lowest leakage rates Samer Kalbouneh acting director general for projects and international relations at the Palestinian Conditions Quality Authority explained one of the West Bank s biggest climate-adaptation demands is interconnectivity linking its water-rich areas with its water-poor ones A trained water engineer he reported a logical move would be for West Bank cities to process their own sewage then send the reclaimed water to desperate farmers and ranchers in the Jordan Valley In the modern day Palestinian cities send sewage to Israel which reclaims the water and charges the Palestinian Authority million a year for the provision But in practice Palestinian localities can t build the infrastructure for this Kalbouneh disclosed You can t even build a -meter outhouse in the Jordan Valley without it being demolished as this qualifies as Area C a zone controlled by the Israeli military As for USAID he commented it tended to promote projects like the one in Dura which appealed Palestinian communities to work within the constraints of Israeli occupation rather than releasing those constraints Requested why he disclosed The U S is managing the conflict not ending it The post USAID Cuts Leave West Bank Water Supply High and Dry appeared first on The Intercept