This editorial was published in Arab News on 24/11/2010
While Palestinians in the occupied territories are denied the opportunity to work in Israel, Israeli farmers are demanding their government bring in 4,000 extra laborers from Thailand to do the menial work on their farms.
The Netanyahu government recently decided to cut the number of foreign workers it allows into the country. Many are employed in agriculture. As a result, Israeli farmers have gone on strike and begun demonstrating. Roads have been blocked, food has been dumped in the streets and police have been bombarded with rotten fruit. There is already a shortage of fresh produce in supermarkets.
The injustice to the Palestinians that this dispute points up also highlights the insanity of Israeli policies toward the occupied territories and their repressed inhabitants. Peace will only come through the creation of trust and the building of a rapprochement between Palestinians and Israelis. It cannot be created by a so-called security wall and the banning of Palestinians from working in Israeli-controlled territory. All that is achieved by confining Palestinians in their own homeland is their continued impoverishment and ever deeper desperation. It may be a pittance that Israeli farmers once paid their Palestinian employees, but it was a pittance that mattered to the fragile Palestinian economy.
The difficulties of Israel’s farmers are also being exacerbated by the increase in agricultural production. Official statistics show that in the last 40 years it has grown no less than twelve fold. This is due only in part to better technology and husbandry. The main booster has been the increased use of water and therein lies one of the little discussed issues of the occupied territories and a final settlement.
Israel has made full use of the water resources that it seized with the Golan Heights and the West Bank. Agriculture is an important export earner. The local water has been plundered, in the view of many agronomists unsustainably, to fuel the sector’s rapid growth. For years, the falling water table and its increased salinity have been issues for Palestinian farmers on the West Bank as well as those in Jordan.
The enormity of what is happening is clear from the figures. Of the water available from West Bank aquifers, Israel uses fully 73 percent, while West Bank Palestinians use 17 percent and illegal Jewish settlers 10 percent
It matters not that Israeli scientists have apparently come up with smarter ways to irrigate crops. Not content with occupying territory illegally, the Israelis are steadily impoverishing it by destroying a water resource that will take many years to be replenished and with climate change, indeed may never recover. At the present rate of exploitation, Israel may one day hand back to the Palestinians little more than an arid desert.
Thus there is a double injustice to the Palestinians. Not only may they not work on Israeli farms and must be replaced by thousands of cheap laborers from Thailand and elsewhere but Israel’s rapacity in its use of water is threatening the agricultural prospects of the whole region.
Palestinian farmers and unemployed farm laborers will doubtlessly be watching the angry demonstrations by their Israeli counterparts with very mixed feelings. This row is the result of agricultural success built upon the precious and fragile resource of water. Maybe Israeli farmers should be cutting back their water use and production and so reducing their reliance on foreign labor flown in from the Far East. Maybe also Palestinians should once again be permitted to work on Israeli farms.
The Netanyahu government recently decided to cut the number of foreign workers it allows into the country. Many are employed in agriculture. As a result, Israeli farmers have gone on strike and begun demonstrating. Roads have been blocked, food has been dumped in the streets and police have been bombarded with rotten fruit. There is already a shortage of fresh produce in supermarkets.
The injustice to the Palestinians that this dispute points up also highlights the insanity of Israeli policies toward the occupied territories and their repressed inhabitants. Peace will only come through the creation of trust and the building of a rapprochement between Palestinians and Israelis. It cannot be created by a so-called security wall and the banning of Palestinians from working in Israeli-controlled territory. All that is achieved by confining Palestinians in their own homeland is their continued impoverishment and ever deeper desperation. It may be a pittance that Israeli farmers once paid their Palestinian employees, but it was a pittance that mattered to the fragile Palestinian economy.
The difficulties of Israel’s farmers are also being exacerbated by the increase in agricultural production. Official statistics show that in the last 40 years it has grown no less than twelve fold. This is due only in part to better technology and husbandry. The main booster has been the increased use of water and therein lies one of the little discussed issues of the occupied territories and a final settlement.
Israel has made full use of the water resources that it seized with the Golan Heights and the West Bank. Agriculture is an important export earner. The local water has been plundered, in the view of many agronomists unsustainably, to fuel the sector’s rapid growth. For years, the falling water table and its increased salinity have been issues for Palestinian farmers on the West Bank as well as those in Jordan.
The enormity of what is happening is clear from the figures. Of the water available from West Bank aquifers, Israel uses fully 73 percent, while West Bank Palestinians use 17 percent and illegal Jewish settlers 10 percent
It matters not that Israeli scientists have apparently come up with smarter ways to irrigate crops. Not content with occupying territory illegally, the Israelis are steadily impoverishing it by destroying a water resource that will take many years to be replenished and with climate change, indeed may never recover. At the present rate of exploitation, Israel may one day hand back to the Palestinians little more than an arid desert.
Thus there is a double injustice to the Palestinians. Not only may they not work on Israeli farms and must be replaced by thousands of cheap laborers from Thailand and elsewhere but Israel’s rapacity in its use of water is threatening the agricultural prospects of the whole region.
Palestinian farmers and unemployed farm laborers will doubtlessly be watching the angry demonstrations by their Israeli counterparts with very mixed feelings. This row is the result of agricultural success built upon the precious and fragile resource of water. Maybe Israeli farmers should be cutting back their water use and production and so reducing their reliance on foreign labor flown in from the Far East. Maybe also Palestinians should once again be permitted to work on Israeli farms.
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