On a searing summer day, Israeli settlers splashed in a West Bank pool created by siphoning off water that had irrigated Palestinian crops, one of many seizures of water resources across the occupied territory. The spring served as a lifeline for the nearby village of Fasayil in the fertile Jordan Valley, where Palestinians have relied on it for generations for food, employment and to supplement irregular Israeli supplies to their domestic taps. “Our water supply remains cut off to this day, depriving us of the water we depend on for our homes, our livelihoods, and our agricultural land,” said Saad Nemer, who farms the land.
Saad Nemer, a Palestinian landowner who says that Israeli settlers diverted water from his land making it impossible to plant crops, visits his arid farm in Fasayil, a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. © Mohamad Torokman, Reuters
Israeli settlers seized his irrigation pipeline in June, channeling the water to an ancient pool in an archaeological site. Soon after, settlers advertised it as an Israeli tourist attraction and Israel’s far-right finance minister pledged financial support. “They are now in the process of developing a recreational park around the pool,” Nemer said. Settlers stop Palestinian villagers approaching The seizure of the spring at Fasayil is part of a pattern that Palestinians say is designed to make their lives in the West Bank untenable. Israeli settlers have attacked at least 160 water and sanitation sites across the Palestinian territory this year, United Nations data shows. Nemer’s greenhouses and fields would normally be full of eggplant, zucchini and watermelons, but without water he has not been able to plant in the scorched land. “The settlers cutting off our water has caused us losses and has meant that many families will lose their work and their livelihoods,” he said. Nemer said that an employee had been beaten up by settlers and he himself had faced threats for attempting to approach the spring as far back as two years ago. Yishai Shreiber, 21, an Israeli settler who had come to swim in the pool near Fasayil on an August afternoon, said Palestinians would not now dare approach. “Now that they see this entire mass of people, all these large groups of Jews coming here to bathe, they are afraid to come here,” said Shreiber.
