Jerusalem’s water crisis
Because Israeli authorities are neglecting East Jerusalem residents by failing to ensure a constant water supply, both Israelis and Palestinians have to cooperate on water management as a pollution catastrophe nears.
On March 4, the day Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started off his speech at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington with a greeting from Jerusalem, “the eternal and undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people,” the water was turned off in the homes of tens of thousands of families in the municipal area of the “undivided city.”
The neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Shehadeh, as-Salam and the Shuafat refugee camp are disconnected from the municipal water supply. (Several families “enjoy” an occasional slight drip from their taps.) These houses in East Jerusalem, on the other side of the separation fence, are home to Israeli residents who hold blue Israeli identity cards. The elderly and disabled people there, who have to wash in pails of water and carry drinking water in bottles, live a 10-minute car ride away from the affluent Jewish neighborhood of Givat HaMivtar.
