After nearly a year of foot-dragging, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai finally approved two weeks ago the connection of the new West Bank Palestinian city of Rawabi to the water supply system. For a moment, the entrepreneur behind the project, Palestinian-American billionaire Bashar al-Masri, who is a member of a wealthy Nablus family, was tempted to believe that the project of his life was saved from collapse. Masri invested practically his entire fortune in the new Palestinian city, and for a while, it looked like the threat of bankruptcy looming over the entrepreneur who sought to do good to his people had passed.
It turns out that the joy of Masri and the hundreds of Rawabi homebuyers was premature. While Mordechai approved the connection of the city to the national water supply system, his approval has been subsequently foiled by another Israeli knock-back that sealed off the taps even before they were opened. Minister of National Infrastructures, Energy and Water Resources Silvan Shalom decided, by virtue of his capacity as the official in charge of the water sector in Israel, to halt the connection of Rawabi to the water supply system pending the convening of the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee (JWC), which has not met for five years.
The JWC is the intricate story of Israelis and Palestinians, who in recent years, especially since the establishment of a right-wing government in Israel, have failed to reach any agreement, regardless of the suffering their failure inflicts on the general public.
The committee was established under the Oslo Accord in 1995. It was designed to create a mechanism for cooperation and understandings with regard to the distribution of water resources in the West Bank between the areas under control of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli settlements. Each side in the JWC was given veto power. However, in view of the ongoing expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the establishment of new settlements, in the last five years, the Palestinians, unwilling to promote the construction boom, refuse to vote on the supply of water to the settlements.
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