The water supply to a refugee camp and three neighborhoods in East Jerusalem was partially restored Friday morning after a
three-day disruption in service.
Tens
of thousands of Palestinians living in the Shoafat camp and the
adjacent neighborhoods of Ras Hamis, Ras Shehada and Hashalom suffer
ongoing water shortages but on Tuesday, faucets went entirely dry. In
the refugee camp alone, 20,000 residents were affected, according to the
United Nations. Tens of thousands of others suffered from the water
outage in the three other neighborhoods.
Most
residents of the area hold Israeli citizenship and have residency
status. Water supply to the neighborhoods, which are all located within
the municipal lines of Jerusalem but lie on the other side of the West
Bank separation barrier, is managed by the same water utility that
operates in the rest of Jerusalem. But municipal water utility Hagihon
is rarely active in the ground on the Palestinian side of the barrier
due to security concerns.
The
municipal water utility Hagihon blamed the problem on faulty and
outdated infrastructure, as well as on the complications of working
across the separation barrier and called on Israel’s national water
authority to intervene.
Israel’s
Water Authority said in a statement that the water system is not
currently equipped to meet the area’s level water usage and that a
solution requires inter-ministerial collaboration.
“At
this point, water utility Hagihon is making every effort to supply
water, despite the deficient infrastructure,” the statement said.
The
water system in the affected areas was designed and constructed long
ago. With a surge in population growth in recent years, the water system
has not been able to keep up with the needs of residents. To make
matters more complicated, most of the buildings in the area having been
built without permits and therefore many residents are not registered
with Hagihon. Every year, particularly in summer, residents endure
repeated disruptions in the water supply. But the latest incident was
one of the worst supply failure ever.
Drops
in pressure are common and sometimes water runs only to homes in the
area’s lowest elevations, forcing residents to ferry water by the bucket
load up the hill. This time, residents said, there was not water
anywhere in the neighborhoods.
Ronit
Sela, director of a human rights project in East Jerusalem for the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel, sent an urgent letter on
Wednesday to Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom demanding
redress.
The
water returned Friday morning, first in the neighborhoods and then to
the refugee camp but only partially and with poor pressure, residents
said. Those who live nearest the separation barrier were able to fill up
their rooftop water containers.
Yusuf
Amhmar, a Shofaat resident and refugee camp activist, estimated that
most camp residents do not yet have regular water supply.
“There is very low pressure,” he said. “In the same alley way one home might have water and the other won’t.”
Hagihon
said on Friday that “water from Hagihon is flowing as usual to the
neighborhoods on the other side of the separation barrier, but the water
infrastructure and sewer and drainage systems in the neighborhoods are
not adequate for the size of the population living there and extensive
development work is needed to bring the infrastructure up to par.”
The
utility added: “Most of the population in these neighborhoods (which is
in the tens of thousands of people) are not registered customers of
Hagihon but still receive a continuous water supply, out of humanitarian
concerns, at a cost of more than NIS 10 million per year, paid for by
Hagihon.”
Hagihon
said it had “warned the Water Authority many times of the urgent need
to regularize the funding of the water supply and the improvement and
maintenance of the infrastructure in the medium and long term, but the
matter has yet to be addressed.”
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