On a searing summer day, Israeli settlers splashed in a West Bank pool created by siphoning off water that had irrigated Palestinian crops, one of many seizures of water resources across the occupied territory.
In another West Bank village, Qusra, settlers still besieging three homes on Thursday had also cut off their water and electricity. The seizure of the spring at Fasayil is part of a pattern that Palestinians say is designed to make their lives in the West Bank untenable. The United Nations and most governments consider the settlements to be illegal under international law related to military occupation.
Israeli settlers have attacked at least 160 water and sanitation sites across the Palestinian territory this year, United Nations data shows. Israel’s far-right coalition government has overseen massive settlement construction that Smotrich says is aimed at burying the idea of a Palestinian state, which has been recognised by more than 150 of 193 U.N. member states as encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 war, but argues the territory is disputed rather than occupied.
Shreiber said the West Bank belonged to the Jewish people, and that if Palestinians don’t want to accept Jewish authority, they should leave.
