110,000 at risk as settlers attack Palestinian water system

New Straits Times

6 days ago

From his monitoring station on a remote hill in the occupied West Bank, water operator Subhil Olayan keeps watch over a lifeline for Palestinians, the Ein Samiyah spring.
So when Israeli settlers recently attacked the system of wells, pumps and pipelines he oversees, he knew the stakes. "There is no life without water, of course," he said.
The attack temporarily cut off water supply to nearby villages. The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water source for 110,000 people, according to the Palestinian company that manages it—making it one of the most vital in the West Bank, where water is in chronic short supply.
"The settlers came and the first thing they did was break the pipeline. And when the pipeline is broken, we automatically have to stop pumping" water to nearby villages, some of which exclusively rely on the Ein Samiyah spring.
"The water just goes into the dirt, into the ground," said Olayan, adding that workers immediately fixed the damage to resume water supply.
Just two days after the latest attack, Israeli settlers—some of them armed—splashed in pools just below the spring, while Olayan monitored water pressure and cameras from a distance.
His software showed normal pressure in the pipes pulling water from the wells and the large pipe carrying water up the hill to his village of Kafr Malik. But he said maintenance teams dared not venture down to the pumping station out of fear for their safety.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, deadly settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have become commonplace. Recently, settlers beat a 20-year-old dual US citizen to death in the nearby village of Sinjil.
Issa Qassis, chairman of the board of the Jerusalem Water Undertaking, which manages the Ein Samiyah spring, said he viewed the attacks as a tool for Israeli land grabs and annexation.
"When you restrict water supply in certain areas, people simply move where water is available," he said at a press conference. "So in a plan to move people to other lands, water is the best and fastest way," he said.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, several Israeli politicians and officials have become increasingly vocal in support of annexing the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Most prominent among them is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said in November that 2025 would be the year Israel applied its sovereignty over the Palestinian territory.
Qassis accused Israel's government of supporting settler attacks, such as the one on Ein Samiyah.
The damage to Ein Samiyah's water facilities was not an isolated incident. In recent months, settlers in the nearby Jordan Valley took control of the Al-Auja spring by diverting its water from upstream, said Farhan Ghawanmeh, a representative of the Ras Ein Al Auja community.
He said two other springs in the area had also recently been taken over.
In Dura al-Qaraa, another West Bank village that uses the Ein Samiyah spring as a back-up water source, residents are also concerned about increasingly long droughts and the way Israel regulates their water rights.
"For years now, no one has been planting because the water levels have decreased," said Rafeaa Qasim, a member of the village council, citing lower rainfall causing the land to be "basically abandoned." Qasim said though water shortages in the village had existed for 30 years, residents' hands were tied in the face of this challenge.
"We have no options; digging a well is not allowed," he said, pointing to a well project that the United Nations and World Bank rejected due to Israeli law prohibiting drilling in the area.
The lands chosen for drilling sit in the West Bank's Area C, which covers over 60 per cent of the territory and is under full Israeli control. Israeli NGO B'Tselem reported in 2023 that the legal system led to sharp disparities in water access within the West Bank between Palestinians and Israelis.
Whereas nearly all residents of Israel and Israeli settlements have running water every day, by contrast, only 36 per cent of West Bank Palestinians do, said the report.