'No life without water': settler attacks threaten West Bank communities
"There is no life without water, of course", he said, following the attack which temporarily cut off the water supply to nearby villages.
The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water source for some 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 attack is one of several recent incidents in which settlers have been accused of damaging, diverting or seizing control of Palestinian water sources.
"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," Olayan told AFP, 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.
Last week, settlers beat a 20-year-old dual US citizen to death in the nearby village of Sinjil, prompting US ambassador Mike Huckabee to urge Israel to "aggressively investigate" the killing.
Annexation
Issa Qassis, chairman on 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 told AFP 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 applies its sovereignty over the Palestinian territory.
Qassis accused Israel's government of supporting settler attacks such as the one on Ein Samiyah.
The Israeli army told AFP that soldiers were not aware of the incident in which pipes were damaged, "and therefore were unable to prevent it".
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.
Water rights
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 that though water shortages in the village have existed for 30 years, residents' hands are tied in the face of this challenge.
"We have no options; digging a well is not allowed", despite the presence of local water springs, he said, pointing to a well project that the UN 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 more than 60 percent 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, only 36 percent of West Bank Palestinians do, the report said.
In Dura al-Qaraa, Qasim fears for the future.
© 2025 AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 67 aid seekers
The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire", soon after it crossed the border from Israel and cleared checkpoints. Israel's military disputed the death toll and said soldiers had fired warning shots "to remove an immediate threat posed to them" as thousands gathered near Gaza City. Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza, with the authorities blaming Israeli fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials flock in huge numbers to aid centres. The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys. In the southern Gaza Strip, the civil defence agency said six others were killed on Sunday near an aid distribution centre northwest of Rafah, where dozens of people lost their lives a day earlier. 'Sniper' fire In Gaza City, Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to try to get a bag of flour but instead found a desperate crowd of thousands and "deadly overcrowding and pushing". "The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest," he added. "Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone." Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll was 67 and expected to rise while the WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as "completely unacceptable". Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties. The army has maintained that it works to avoid harm to civilians, saying this month that it issued new instructions to its troops on the ground "following lessons learned" from a spate of similar incidents. Papal call The war was sparked by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 58,895 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday expressed his regret to Pope Leo XIV after what he described as a "stray" munition killed three people sheltering at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City. At the end of the Angelus prayer on Sunday, the pope slammed the "barbarity" of the Gaza war and called for peace, days after the Israeli strike on the territory's only Catholic church. The strike was part of the "ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza", he added. "I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations." The Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, held mass at the Gaza church on Sunday after travelling to the devastated territory in a rare visit on Friday. 'Expanding' operations Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave. On Sunday morning, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately. Israel was "expanding its activities" against Hamas around Deir el-Balah, "where it has not operated before", the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. The announcement prompted concern from families of hostages held since October 7, 2023 that the Israeli offensive could harm their loved ones. Delegations from Israel and militant group Hamas have spent the last two weeks in indirect talks on a proposed 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 10 living hostages. Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
Calm returns to south Syria after violence that killed 1,000: monitor
A ceasefire announced on Saturday appeared to be holding after earlier agreements failed to end fighting between longtime rivals the Druze and the Bedouin that spiralled to draw in the Islamist-led government, the Israeli military and armed tribes from other parts of Syria. AFP correspondents on the outskirts of Sweida city reported hearing no clashes on Sunday morning, with government forces deployed in some locations in the province to enforce the truce and at least one humanitarian convoy headed for the Druze-majority city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since around midnight (2100 GMT Saturday), "Sweida has been experiencing a cautious calm", adding government security forces had blocked roads leading to the province in order to prevent tribal fighters from going there. The Britain-based Observatory gave an updated toll on Sunday of more than 1,000 killed since the violence erupted a week ago, including 336 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the minority group, as well as 342 government security personnel and 21 Sunni Bedouin. Witnesses, Druze factions and the Observatory have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses including summary executions when they entered Sweida days ago. Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP that "the city hasn't seen calm like this in a week". 'Totally calm' The interior ministry said overnight that Sweida city was "evacuated of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city's neighbourhoods were halted". The Observatory had said Druze fighters retook control of the city on Saturday evening. Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa had on Saturday announced a fresh ceasefire in Sweida and renewed a pledge to protect Syria's ethnic and religious minorities in the face of the latest sectarian violence since Islamists overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December. A spokesman for Syria's tribal and clan council told Al Jazeera late Saturday that fighters had left the city "in response to the call of the presidency and the terms of the agreement". Another medic inside Sweida told AFP by telephone on Sunday that "the situation is totally calm... We aren't hearing clashes." "No medical or relief assistance has entered until now," the medic added, requesting anonymity due to the security situation. State news agency SANA published images showing medical aid being prepared near the health ministry in Damascus and quoted Health Minister Musab al-Ali as saying assistance would be delivered to Sweida's main hospital, where bodies have piled up. Inside the city, where around 150,000 people live, residents have been holed up in their homes without electricity and water, and food supplies have also been scarce. The United Nations migration agency said more than 128,000 people in Sweida province have been displaced by the violence. 'Brutal acts' US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Sunday that the country stood at a "critical juncture", adding that "peace and dialogue must prevail -- and prevail now". "All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance," he wrote on X, saying "brutal acts by warring factions on the ground undermine the government's authority and disrupt any semblance of order". Sharaa's announcement Saturday came hours after the United States said it had negotiated a ceasefire between Syria's government and Israel, which had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week. Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it was acting in defence of the group, as well as to enforce its demands for the total demilitarisation of Syria's south. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday urged the Syrian government's security forces to prevent jihadists from entering and "carrying out massacres" in the south, and called on Damascus to "bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks".
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
Pope Leo slams 'barbarity' of Gaza war as civil defence says Israeli gunfire kills 44
Gaza 's civil defence agency on Sunday said at least 44 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians waiting to collect humanitarian aid, in the latest killing of Palestinians seeking desperately needed food handouts. "As of this moment, 44 people have been killed and dozens injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians waiting for aid," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding that the shooting took place near Gaza City in the territory's north. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Deaths of people waiting for handouts in huge crowds near food points in Gaza have become a regular occurrence, with the territory's authorities frequently blaming Israeli fire. Addressing the ongoing conflict in his traditional Angelus prayer, Pope Leo XIV slammed the "barbarity" of the war in the Palestinian territory and urged against the "indiscriminate use of force". His plea came just days after a deadly strike by Israel's military on a Catholic church in Gaza. "I once again ask for an immediate end to the barbarity of the war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict," Leo said at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence near Rome. The pope, who spoke by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the morning after Thursday's church strike, spoke of his "deep sorrow" for the attack on the Holy Family Church. The church was sheltering around 600 displaced people, the majority of them children and including dozens of people with special needs. Israel expressed "deep sorrow" over the damage and civilian casualties, adding that the military was investigating the strike. "This act, unfortunately, adds to the ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza," Leo said on Sunday. "I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations," he added. The Israeli military on Sunday issued an evacuation order for Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip, warning of imminent action against Hamas militants. Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war, which is now in its 22nd month. The pope also expressed his "sympathy" for the plight of "beloved Middle Eastern Christians" and their "sense of being able to do little in the face of this dramatic situation".
