Maariv newspaper has said that 200 Palestinian towns and villages in Area C of the West Bank suffer from serious water scarcity and are isolated from the Israeli water network
According to the Israeli newspaper the water crisis in these Palestinian areas has coincided with shrinking water resources in the Palestinian Authority territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
It highlighted the water crisis in Gaza saying its network of water resources are collapsing especially due to the increasing salinity levels in its aquifer as seawater are seeping in from the Mediterranean.
Haaretz described the water problem in Gaza as one of the factors that would lead the fragile situation in the besieged enclave to explode.
The Oslo Accords which were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has granted Israel control over the West Bank’s water sources and discriminates in how the water is divided.
Under the agreements Israel gets 80 percent of the water from the West Bank mountain aquifer (one of three underground resources shared by Israelis and Palestinians) while the rest goes to the Palestinians.
The agreements also set no limit on the amount of water Israel can take but limits the Palestinians to 118 million cubic meters from the wells that existed prior to the accords and another 70 million to 80 million cubic meters from new drilling.
However for various technical reasons and unexpected drilling failures in the eastern basin of the aquifer (the only place the agreement allows the Palestinians to drill) the Palestinians produce less water than the agreements set.
According to B’Tselem as of 2014 the Palestinians are only getting 14 percent of the aquifer’s water.
