The Environment As A Weapon

"Given Israel's own nuclear program and well developed military industry, the likelihood is that Israel is a manufacturer of DU ammunition. The firm Rafael of Israel is named in numerous reports as being a manufacturer. But even if this were not the case, Israel has been able to import DU weapons from the United States," says MEnA. 

Radioactive materials are penetrating the water (already scarce), land, and the whole food chain, contaminating the densely populated West Bank and Gaza.

Scientists have shown that an excess concentration of uranium in kidney tissue can cause Proximal Tubular Necrosis - cell damage in the first part of the collecting tubules of the kidney. DU as a radioactive material exposes humans to ionizing radiation from outside of the body, or from material taken inside the body.

Acute effects of ionizing radiation can cause nausea, vomiting, hair loss, changes in blood count, genetic defects, reproductive defects, and rapid death. Delayed effects (as in the recent case with the Balkans) often result in cancer. MEnA's report shows that an average of 20 tons of medical waste per day is being produced and carelessly stored.

At the time of the 1967 Israeli occupation, Gaza was already on the verge of a water supply crisis. Now, it experiences frequent outbreaks of waterborne diseases, its soil is increasingly alkaline and saline, and it has only a bare resemblance to a sewerage disposal system - all reasons why, in August 1993, Israel off-loaded it as a concession to the Palestinian Administration. Strategically, the Gaza Strip can be easily sealed off and isolated.

Accumulated wastes because of the inability of municipalities to access designated landfills have led to the burning of almost half of the waste generated. Nablus has been completely denied access to the country's healthcare waste incinerator, resulting in a large quantity of unmanaged waste on open land.

As well, the Israelis have been uprooting grapevines and olive, palm, almond, orange, fig, strawberry, guava, banana and other types of fruit trees. In Salfit, six hectares of olive groves were bulldozed or uprooted. A water cistern that supplied water to some of the orchards was also destroyed. One anonymous informer states that the orchards and plantations have been uprooted in areas situated near Israeli settlements, military camps, and borders in order to create open land so that they can see anyone trying to encroach. 

However, the fields of the Palgey Maim Water and Land Resources Development Company (an Israeli water management treatment initiative) are intact. The Salfit new wastewater treatment plant was the target of two Israeli rockets, the contents of which could have leaked onto farming land through the raw sewerage seeping into ground water aquifers.

Eighty-five per cent of water in the Middle East goes towards agricultural purposes. The average per capita Palestinian consumption of water is 50 cubic meters annually whereas the total Israeli annual consumption is 1.8 billion cubic meters. Agriculture plays a crucial role in the economy of the Palestinians whilst the high-tech industrialized Israelis have been of the opinion that it is cheaper to import. Their domestic agriculture accounts for less than 3% of their GDP.

In September 1993, a Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles was signed on the Interim Sel-Government Arrangement. The first item, in Annex III, on cooperation in economic development programs included a focus on "cooperation in the field of water, including a Water Development Program prepared by experts from both sides, which will specify the mode of cooperation in the management of water resources in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and will include proposals for studies and plans on water rights of each party, as well as an equitable utilization of joint water resources for implementation in and beyond the interim period."

Further ratification of this was postponed in the Oslo II agreement, holding off for the Final Staus arrangements. From this, the Joint Water Committee (JWC) was established. No one can say what another signed agreement will achieve. 

On January 31st of this year, the Palestinian-Israeli JWC issued a Joint Declaration for Keeping the Water Infrastructure Out of the Cycle of Violence. Both the Palestinian and Israeli heads of the JWC, Nabil el-Sherif and Noa Kinarty, signed it. Perhaps, with Ariel Sharon in power, this agreement will also become null and void. The declaration states:

"In order for this to succeed, we need the cooperation and support of all the population, both Israeli and Palestinian. We call on the general public not to damage, in anyway, the water supply to the Palestinian and the Israeli cities, towns and villages in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

The 'get out' clause here is the call on the 'general public.' Was it the 'general public' who was behind the rockets and the bulldozers that uprooted the Palestinians' produce and targeted their water and wastewater facilities?

Let's pray that the United Nations investigative team will be open and honest in its findings and reporting of what they, hopefully, will have access to. For, Sura'tul Bani-Israel, ayat 99 warns, "Do they not consider that Allah Who created the heavens and the earth, is able to create their like, and [that] He has appointed for them a doom about which there is no doubt? But the unjust do not consent to ought but denying."

Sources:

• Environmental News Service. Environment: A Weapon In the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. February 2001.
• Irfan, H. In the Face of Depleted Responsibility Plead Ignorance, IslamOnline. January 2001.
• Kelly, K. and T. Homer-Dixon. Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Gaza. American Associated Press and Reuters; Advancement of Science and The University of Toronto. June 1995.
• Sher, Hanan. Where Thirst Wonderfully Concentrates The Mind, Civilization. U.S. Congress Library.
• Irfan, H. The Faceless Drought of Central Asia and the Middle East. IslamOnline. November 2000.

Hwaa Irfan is a staff writer for Health and Science section of Islamonline