Violation: blocked water drainages causes losses for farmers
Date: 13/12/2013
Location: Azzun Atma, Beit Amin and Qalqiliya
Details:
After waiting weeks to harvest his winter crops, farmer Abdelkarim al-Shaikh stared in sorrow at his land flooded and sunk by rainwater due to a blockage in the drainage cesspit, which is set up in the apartheid wall adjacent to his land. As a result, the land was sunk in water causing a total damage to the crops.
In a similar scenario, the village of Azzun Atma had rainwater flooded right next to the segregation wall as well. Not only that, the flooded water got mixed with sewage water leaking from Sha'ar Tikva in addition to solid waste as well. As a result, the agricultural fields of Izzbit Salman became a swamp for solid and plastic waste, causing the entire crops to die.
Photos1+2: one of the cesspit in the apartheid wall
The aforementioned disaster became a frequent dilemma reoccurring annually, which has no radical solution. The only aggrieved in this case is the Palestinian farmer. What worsened the situation is that the occupation refused to clean the clog in the drainage cesspit. More than 300 agricultural dunums were sunk in sewage water as a result.
According to the data of Qalqiliya Ministry of Agriculture, more than 6,000 poultry birds died due to water flooding into their barrack located in the area. In addition, 300 to 400 dunums planted with citrus sunk in water causing a damage in the crops. Mr. Tawfiq Eid, the responsible of the infrastructure in Qalqiliya, to the LRC researcher stated the following: "The main problem lays in the structure and the design of the apartheid wall, which did not take in regard the slope of the lands and did not set up adequate number of cesspits in the bottom of the wall. This caused rainwater to flood into the lands of Qalqiliya".
He also added: "This problem is not recent since we, every year, submit complaints to the Israeli side about the problem and its side effects but all we got back is promises with no solutions on the real ground" .
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
