I get a little tired sometimes of a the navel-gazing intra-Jewish controversies about Israel. Here’s a first-order issue:
Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says. In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. [...]
In the 112-page report, Amnesty says that on average Palestinian daily water consumption reaches 70 litres a day, compared with 300 litres for the Israelis.
Israel is, of course, a democracy. And politicians in democracies are responsive to the interests of the electorate. Jewish settlers in the West Bank get to vote. Palestinians in the West Bank don’t get to vote. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that infrastructure decisions are systematically made in ways that favor the interests of the settlers over the interests of the stateless Palestinians. These are the wages of occupation.
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