By Julie Berthier

Since 2001 CARE is developing its program in the field of access to water in the northern pat of the West Bank, the poorest region of Palestine after Gaza. In the Jenin and Tulkarem area poverty stands at 70%. Construction of the Wall by Israel is worsening the situation. The Wall is spreading a feeling of distress, confinement, and partition. The northern part of the West Bank is becoming a closed and imprisoned area. Land has been confiscated, isolated, and abandoned on the other side of the Wall. Palestinian economy, based mainly on agriculture, is collapsing day after day. How can people work and sell their produce when a Wall is cutting the road, preventing you from moving in your country, and preventing you from seeing the horizon? The Wall, check-points, IDs and control over goods, is slowing down the daily economic life of Palestinians and making it impossible.

Hamas victory in the January 2006 elections came as a protest vote and a rescue call from a difficult situation that has persisted for too many years. Since the beginning of 2006, the Israeli government froze the transfer of taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and the European Union and the United States stopped their aid to Palestinians. Currently 160,000 public employees are not receiving their salaries, which puts more than 900,000 people in an extremely difficult situation. Today more than a third of the population is unemployed and live in poverty because of a decision, that, first and foremost, is punishing the Palestinian people.

With four offices: in Jerusalem, Gaza, Ramallah, and Jenin, for many years now, CARE is helping Palestine’s most vulnerable communities. CARE is basing its intervention on field experience and proximity to the people. 95% of CARE staff are Palestinians. They are living here near the people they are helping, and they are acquaintances, neighbours, cousins, and friends. They understand the situation and are well positioned to develop projects adapted to beneficiary families. They feel the daily tension, revolt, confusion, and despair. CARE is, now more than ever, present and is persevering, with targeted and efficient projects for Palestine’s survival.

In Baqa Al-Sharqia village, Tulkarem Governorate, the boys school is welcoming more than 400 pupils, including girls from 12 to 18 years old. With help from CARE new sanitary units were built instead of the old ones that were unhealthy and unfit. The old infrastructure was removed, replaced with 10 toilets, 4 sinks and mirrors, 8 water taps, and space for disabled children. According to the English teacher in the school, the new facility is “very clean, well equipped, and most of all, big enough for all ages.” Rasha is a fifteen year old student, now during the break she can go to the bathroom. “Before, we never went. It was very dirty. Now my friends and I we go look ourselves in the mirror, wash our hands, and readjust our veils.”

The girls are conscious of hygiene problems in their villages and community. Thus, during awareness raising program in sanitary rehabilitation, CARE took the opportunity to raise awareness among the older pupils on water related problems such as resources, solid waste, hygiene, pollution, and water chlorination, and the means to preserve, recycle, and save water on a daily basis. Had it been for such training, local communities normally do not pay attention to hygiene issues and it is not their priority. The priority is to feed their families. So they dispose their wastewater anywhere, which eventually leads to pollution and disease. Therefore, even in an emergency situation, CARE wants to develop a long term project so people can rebuild their lives under better conditions, but also and most importantly, CARE wants to empower people so they can face difficulties on their own without help from NGOs.

For the moment, in Baqa Al-Sharqia, the water and sanitation network is only 60% operational. In the school itself, CARE has constructed, near the sanitary units, septic tanks to discharge wastewater. The school is receiving its fresh water from tanker trucks that bring water from an agricultural well and then stores it in a container on the school’s roof top.

CARE is rehabilitating and digging wells that provide water to villages such as Baqa Ash Sharqia where there is an old well. Nazlet Issa has an artesian well from the 1960s. Now CARE will install an electric generator on the well to reduce cost. In Nazlet Issa water is pumped to a reservoir and sent through the network that serves the community, and soon, water will arrive to agricultural lands and greenhouses. Thus 2,500 people will receive drinking water.

The well in Ya’bad was entirely built by CARE, which is exceptional because usually it is not allowed by the Israeli authorities to build infrastructure or homes for Palestinians on “Israeli soil.” The well in Ya’bad is fully active during the whole day and is indispensable. Small and large tankers trucks come one after the other to take water to Ya’bad and neighbouring villages. 22,000 people receive water regularly, thanks to this project initiated and supported by CARE.

According to Zied Salim, head of the village council and responsible for the Nazlat Isa well, the task remains difficult. “Fuel is becoming more scarce every day and thus more and more expensive. This has consequences for artesian wells like mine. Also we have difficulty transporting the water. And there is Israel that does not help us. Israeli authorities come regularly to control the pumping and measure the level of water, and they are checking if we take too much water. We are authorized to pump only 300,000 m3 per year for agricultural and domestic purposes but this is not enough. And there is the Wall. A Wall that splits Nazlet Issa in half. This Wall is destroying the land, houses, and water infrastructures. Israelis are confiscating, settlers are polluting, and Palestine is suffering.”

Al-Nazleh Al-Sharqia is a beneficiary village where CARE is implementing the Water 5 project. Household water cisterns are being constructed to help the community there. The home of Nazim Kitali is located in a high area of the village. Nazim used to work in Israel, now he is not allowed to go there anymore. He is unemployed, and has to sustain his family: his wife and 5 children between the age of 2 and 13 years old. CARE has built a cistern in his garden where he is keeping his sheep and hens. Because of this cistern, Nazim has water every day for domestic use, and to irrigate his garden, and offer water to his animals. Nazim is aware of the opportunity open to him with the new cistern, and he is saying: “The cistern is really a strategic solution for us. It allows us to live decently when water is cut from the village. Before, we had to fill bottles at our neighbours’ house. Thanks a lot. Thanks to CARE, thank you for everything!”

Dahsha Suleiman is living in the same village. She too was collecting water from her neighbours with bottles. This old lady cannot read and write, and she does now know her age. She is living in a shed on a small plot of land, and people in the village are checking on her. CARE has built her a concrete home- a small room where she can sleep protected from the weather and that gives her some space of her own and some privacy. Now Dahsha has a cistern also, so she can bath, drink, and have a decent living.

8 beneficiary families had a cisterns built in each of their homes in Al-Nazleh Al-Sharqia. CARE is receiving too many demands and can only meet the needs of the most vulnerable families. Selection criterion depends on the number of people in each family, income level, and unemployment. Saleem, CARE staff member in Jenin, is saying: “the choice is really difficult and can lead to disputes, jealousy between neighbours, and between villages. Even for us it’s heartbreak and it is difficult to make people understand we don’t have enough resources to help everybody in need!” Thanks to CARE, and thanks to you donor countries, we can help Palestine get better and regain a dignity deprived on daily basis because of the situation.