Thread by @WaterPalestine

FACTS for this week about how Israel uses water as a weapon against Palestinians (citations below):

Israel’s blockade on #Gaza enters its 12th year. Less than 16% of items needed to repair & construct #water infrastructure are allowed entry. Gaza’s economy is near collapse.

Above image via @btselem "An elderly man fills a water container at a public multi-faucet sink in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip": btselem.org/photoblog/2014…

FACTS for this week via Human Rights Council report March 15, 2019: reliefweb.int/sites/reliefwe…

Our website: waterjusticeinpalestine.org

Today in #Gaza, 95% of the population does not have access to clean water. (In 2000, the public water network provided over 98% of Gazans with safe drinking water. By 2014, after Israel’s bombardments, that figure had plunged to 10.5%.)

68% of households in Gaza are food insecure. More than 55% are unemployed. While the average cost of water in the West is 0.7% of monthly wages, 30% of monthly wages of Gazans goes towards buying water, for those who can afford it.

Others must rely on tainted water from the public taps that operate at most a few times a week.

The Occupied Palestinian Territory has the world’s highest #unemployment rate. In Gaza, specifically, over half the workforce is unemployed. 70% of youth, who make up almost 30% of the population, and 78% of women are without work.

Poverty in Gaza is pervasive; 53% of the population survive on less than $4.60/day. 60% subsist on less than $3.60/day.

Although Gaza has rich farmland and 40 km of coastline, the Israeli blockade has severely restricted the residents’ access to domestic food sources available through agriculture and fishing.

Israel’s strict limitations have severely hampered the livelihood of Gaza’s fishermen, 95% of whom already live below the poverty line. Israel routinely shoots at & arrests fishermen, confiscates their vessels & in the last two years, has killed two fishermen and injured dozens

The agricultural potential of Gaza has been deeply undermined by the blockade. 35% of farmland falls within an Israeli-enforced “buffer zone.” Farmers wishing to use their arable land are in constant threat of being shot at by Israeli military.

Israel has damaged Palestinian farmland in Gaza by aerially spraying the land with herbicides. In January 2018, 550 acres of agricultural lands belonging to 212 farmers were affected, with an estimated loss of $1.3 million.

This week's water facts about Palestine via @UNHumanRights Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967: reliefweb.int/sites/reliefwe…

Find past weeks water FACTS on our site: waterjusticeinpalestine.org