Bethlehem/PNN/

The water crisis in the Palestinian areas is due to Israel’s stealing of West Bank water, today said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates reflecting on the serious water shortage in the West Bank.

It condemned in a statement what it described as Israel’s policy of thirst against the Palestinian people, considering it part of its collective punishment policy.

“This act is an extension of the occupation’s open war on the Palestinian presence and its colonial measures to accelerate the declared and undeclared gradual annexation of the occupied West Bank, and to create a colonial environment to expel the Palestinians from their homeland,” said the Foreign Ministry.

The Israeli occupation authorities steal the water that belongs to the Palestinian people and sell a small amount of it back to them to the point water is not available most days of the year, especially in the summer, and the quantities of water allocated to some governorates, such as Bethlehem and Hebron, were deliberately reduced during the recent heat wave, it said.

The Foreign Ministry accused Israel of waging an open sabotage war against all Palestinian water resources, including the demolition of wells and reservoirs, and preventing Palestinians from digging more wells under the pretext of not having a license, which is never granted anyway, while settlers enjoy an abundance of the Palestinian water throughout the year provided by the Israeli government that exceeds their needs.

It said the occupying state deprives the Palestinian people of their most basic human and civil rights and violates its obligations as an occupying power in accordance with international law and the Geneva Conventions.

This, said the Ministry, reflects an abject international failure to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to fulfill their obligations towards the Palestinian people under occupation and to ensure respect for the civil and human rights of the Palestinian people.