For some people, water turns dryness into green, because it flows and nurtures their crops; but for others, the reality is quite different, because even though they have pipes under their homes, they don´t have access to the content. As Fathi Khaddirat, coordinator of the Jordan Valley Solidarity Campaign, said to Real World Radio, it is clear who has access and who doesn´t in that region occupied by Israel.

“Water is the main resource for life and the Israeli occupation authority knows this, so they control every drop of water in the Jordan Valley to control the Palestinian population”, he said.

Near the place where Real World Radio interviewed Khaddirat, there was an extraction plant collecting the resource that used to flow through a system of water distribution pipes, and where now there are only rocks and dust. This water is now transported to Israeli settlements, while Palestinians have to pay high prices and implement a complex system of manual collection, and they have to travel several miles to get water.

Sometimes in front of them, just a few meters away –on the other side of the road that separates their houses from the plantations of the settlers, there is a faucet: but it is barely seen, because it is surrounded by a thick barbed wire fence, as a reminder of the fact that water no longer belongs to them.

But despite this, despite the huge difficulties the Palestinian people suffer in order to live and grow their food, they have decided to stay in their territories and “not be refugees again”.

“I think it´s a kind of resistance against the occupation, because if we leave, we will lose the land, we will lose the water and we don´t want to lose the land”, said Khaddirat. And he added: “We don´t accept being refugees again. We have this struggle which is the longest: we are struggling against the occupation, we are struggling for the future of our children. So I´m not going to be a refugee, and I will not let anybody control the future of my children”.

“I want to be here, even if we have to buy each cubic meter of water for ten dollars: I will spend all my income to buy water because I want to live with dignity in my homeland”, he concluded.

Photo: http://www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org/