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In a 100-page report titled “Troubled Waters: Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water,” Amnesty International claims Israel is cutting off access to water for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

“This scarcity has affected every walk of life for Palestinians,” Amnesty’s researcher on Israel, Donatella Rovera, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday, ahead of the report’s release. “A greater amount of water has to be granted to them.”

According to the report, water consumption per capita for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is about 70 liters (18 gallons) per day, while Israeli per capita use is 300 liters (79 gallons). On average, Israelis use four times the amount of water per person on than Palestinians.

In the West Bank the Mountain Aquifer is the only source of water for Palestinians. Israel controls the aquifer and over 80 percent of water drawn goes to the Jewish state. As a result, the 450,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinian residents.

Rovera said the water situation in Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, had reached a “crisis point.” He also estimated damage to Gaza’s sewer system from the Israeli offensive has left 90 to 95 percent of the water in the region contaminated and unfit for human consumption. To make matters worse, an ongoing Israeli blockade is stopping any supplies for repairs to come in.

Israeli officials denied many of the claims from the report, complaining that Amnesty had neglected to use transparent information provided by the Israeli government.

“Israel has fulfilled all its obligations under the water agreement regarding the supply of additional quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Palestinians, on the other hand, have significantly violated their commitments under the water agreement, specifically regarding important issues such as illegal drilling (they have drilled over 250 wells without the authorization of the Joint Water Commission) and handling of sewage.”

Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOfJfAnrmQ&feature=player_embedded
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/amnesty_international
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iVkvzuni3YkNQU5PikPz4yiPs0GQD9BJA3KO0
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/10/27/israel.water/

Just days after U.S. special envoy George Mitchell left Israel without reaching a deal for the resumption of peace talks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with President Barack Obama in New York. The trilateral meeting, which will take place on Tuesday, will be immediately followed by seperate individual meetings between Obama and each of the leaders.

While it would be foolish to expect anything too substantial to come out of Tuesday, the meetings have to be considered a step in the right direction and at the very least a small victory in foreign policy for the Obama administration — a victory that comes at a good time with Obama preparing to appear at the openings of the United Nations General Assembly and the G20 economic meetings in Pittsburgh.

“The sides agreed to this because of their respect for the president and his standing,” a White House official said. “We still have work to do to get to the point where we can relaunch talks.”

The goal of the meetings will be to get both sides back on track towards reaching a peace agreement. The two sides have been locked in a stalemate for months now. One of the main issues standing in the way of progress right now is the settlement issue, something Obama wants to stop and something the Palestinian’s demand a total freeze of before resuming peace talks.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about the difficulties of negotiating between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

“I well remember that brilliant sunny afternoon on the South Lawn of the White House when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands,” she said. “And I well remember the disappointment at Camp David despite enormous efforts to try to finally forge that peace agreement when it was not successful.”

“However, I believe that the commitment evidenced by my husband and the commitment evidenced by President Obama to be in this from the very beginning, never to be deterred, … is the best way for America to demonstrate our absolute belief that this issue is at the core of so many other challenges we face,” Clinton continued. “And we are going to do all we can to persuade, cajole, encourage the parties themselves to make that agreement.”

Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/meeting-talks-obama-netanyahu-abbas
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27347.html

A four person United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in the three week Gaza war. The panel conducted 188 interviews, reviewed over 10,000 pages of documents and viewed over a thousand photographs and videos before drawing its conclusions.

The war, which ended on a cease-fire shortly after President Barack Obama came into office, claimed the lives of over 1,300 Palestinians, several hundred of which were civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fight, 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.

The 567 report issued a call for Israel and the Palestinian groups to properly investigate the transgressions. If a credible investigation doesn’t happen the council could refer the situation to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution.

“The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action,” said the report.

The report criticized Palestinian rocket fire for “causing terror in the affected communities of southern Israel.” The majority of the report centered on the Israeli military’s action in the conflict. According to the report “disproportionate force” was used often against the Palestinian civilian population and in a number of occasions Israeli forces launched “direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome.”

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html

Only for a day, but the disappearance is causing quite a fuss with the media in Israel.

“Anarchy, turf wars and lies,” said one headline Thursday in the Haaretz daily.

The controversy began on Monday when the prime minister’s media adviser, Nir Hefetz, had to admit he did not know where Netanyahu was. After initially issuing a vague statement about visiting a top-secret Mossad installation inside Israel, Netanyahu kept silent as reports emerged that he had flown to Moscow for urgent talks on Iran.

The media reports vary on their versions of what the Israeli prime minister was actually doing during the time of his disappearance. Some claim he was pressuring the Russians to halt arms sales to Iran, warning of an impending strike against Iranian nuclear facilities or discussing the recent disappearance of the Russian-crewed freighter.

A changing story line from Netanyahu and then silence have enraged the Israeli media, who branded the prime minister a liar on Thursday. Usually the Israeli media has no problem keeping sensitive matters under wraps on the grounds of national security. What angered them here was the presumably false cover story given to them by Netanyahu.

“Look what happened to the prime minister on his way to Russia: His credibility, which was never sky high, took a hard blow,” wrote the Maariv daily in a front-page column.