IYAD QASSEM is trying to run a coffee shop without water. He reuses the stuff in his sink, which quickly fills with muck, and in the shishas that Palestinians puff on his patio. It would be a difficult task, if he had many customers: but it seems people who haven’t showered in a week lose interest in sipping tea in 35°C heat. “The café is empty because everyone is worried about the situation. It’s getting impossible to run a business,” he says.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Salfit and the surrounding villages are suffering through a months-long drought. Summer shortages are nothing new on the parched hills outside Nablus, in the northern West Bank. But this season is particularly bad. Taps slowed to a trickle before the Ramadan holiday; and few expect relief before the winter rains.
Israelis once obsessed over the level of their largest natural reservoir, the Sea of Galilee. This week it was just 11cm above its “red line,” the point at which Israel stops pumping water to avoid ecological damage. Yet this no longer causes public concern, for most of Israel’s water is artificially produced. About a third comes from...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2aKggQD
EmoticonEmoticon