Normal
What do I use water for?
- drinking
- showering
- brushing my teeth
- flushing the toilet
- washing dishes
- doing laundry
- making condensed chicken noodle soup because I’m in college and that’s what we do
While I was in Nablus, I washed myself every other day. We would fill a bucket with water and try not to use more than that, all five of us. I would feel horrible if my hand slipped off the faucet, letting more water run out than needed before I could turn off the stream. Would my landlord upstairs run out of water before the building got a new supply from Israel? We didn’t flush the toilet unless it was necessary. Sometimes, there wasn’t enough water, so we would pour in bottled water to make the toilet flush. We tried not to use dishes so we wouldn’t have to use lots of water to clean them. We spent the majority of our money buying bottled water to drink so we wouldn’t use up our building’s allocation.
Back at home, it was completely bizarre to feel such a rush of emotions during such a mundane task as taking a shower. Ahhhh! Warm water, no rush to get out, no consequences of taking your time…. But then I thought of my friends in Nablus, and in other parts of Palestine. A relaxed shower is just not an experience anyone has ever had there. If I use less water, it’s not as if that extra water goes to Nablus. It will just get used up by someone else in my building complex here, and the supply is limitless. How strange.
According to a 2007 report on the environmental status of Palestine by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), currently “more than 80% of the Palestinian water from the West Bank’s Aquifer Systems is used by Israel, accounting for 25% of Israel’s water needs. On the other hand, the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are denied their right to utilize their own water resources from the Jordan River’s System, which they were utilizing partially until 1967.”
How would my life be affected if more than 80% of the water I use now was siphoned away from me? Could I lead the same life with approx. 20% of the water I use now? Okay, I wouldn’t take so many showers. I might smell. My hair might not look as nice. But imagine if I used my water to maintain a garden and feed my family. If I were barely getting by with 100% of my water, how would my life be with 20%?
A Jewish friend of mine studied abroad in Israel during high school. He commented proudly that it’s common to call a long shower an “Israeli shower”. How can Israelis be so oblivious to the fact that their comfortable life comes at the cost of Palestinian livelihood? I spoke to an IDF soldier on a bus from Jerusalem to Be’erSheva who told me that he believes the US sends over water to help Israel, and that they don’t take water from the Occupied Territories. What he actually meant is that he doesn’t believe the Occupied Territories exists (he classifies the West Bank and Gaza as Israel). How can Israeli settlements fill up their Olympic-sized pools and run sprinklers for green lawns and landscaping as they look down from their hills at the endless sea of black water tanks on top of Palestinian houses? It’s just immoral to treat people this way and be so selfish. The shortage of water is an issue that will eventually affect everyone in the region, and it’s of no use to anyone to steal valuable resources and divide them in a completely unjust manner. The normalcy of a dependable water source is something we take for granted, but is just one aspect of how “normal” for Palestinians takes on an entirely different meaning.
