Update continued.

Yesterday was December, and it’s still dry in Palestine. It hasn’t rained once since I arrived, and the sun is hot in the sky. To those of you back in the UK, snowed-under and frozen-in, that may sound like paradise, but recently I’ve noticed another kind of fear in some of the locals. The fact is, if it doesn’t rain soon, next year’s crops may well fail, food prices will rocket and basic foodstuffs will simply be out of many people’s price range. I was told that last time the crops failed, a kilo of tomatoes went from 4-5 shekels a kilo, to almost 20. For a country in which many people live on the poverty line, this kind of 4-fold increase is too much to bear. The rain was late last year, and the summer was hard on the people. On top of the food prices, there is the ever present worry of water shortages: if the tanks run dry and the pipes are turned off, there will be no water in people’s homes. You can buy water in the shops, but shit doesn’t flush. The sweltering heat becomes rotten and oppressive, and everybody prays for rain.

The issue of the water supplies is one of the most serious, yet underreported, effects of the Separation Wall. When the wall was being built the international community criticised (albeit with muted voices) the building of the wall, and found it to be in several violations of the Geneva Convention. However, whilst it was widely reported that the wall was further violating international law by being built within the United Nations recognised Green Line (drawn along the 1967 borders) the reasons for this were more insidious than the mere “land-grab” that made the BBC headlines. As well as fragmenting communities, with the land the wall annexes invaluable water supplies, leaving the majority of the Palestinian water in the control of Israel, and as such 80% of this water is diverted to the illegal settlements. It is often asserted that the major battles of the 21^st century will be fought over water rather than oil, but already in Palestine water is being used as a weapon to choke people into submission.

Today, I joined the local library, and tomorrow a group of us are heading over to the wall at Qalqiliya with paints and a camera. Tonight, I’m heading up to the Samaritan village to buy half a case of communion wine from an inbred man of unusual proportions. Kicks, it seems, can be hard to come by...