So now, after just under five years of rule by US military occupation, the historic city of Baghdad is drowning in lakes of human excreta. (Hat-tip Juan.) That item from AFP a couple of weeks ago reports that,
- One of three sewage treatment plants is out of commission, one is working at stuttering capacity while a pipe blockage in the third means sewage is forming a foul lake so large it can be seen “as a big black spot on Google Earth,” said Tahseen Sheikhly, civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.
Welcome to Gaza.
Gaza has been under Israeli military occupation for just over 40 years, and has been slowly drowning in its own gathering lakes of sewage for several years now.
Maintaining working safe water systems, and therefore also functioning sewage-disposal systems, is a fundamental function of government. It is especially important in areas that, like Gaza or Baghdad, are both heavily populated and flat, and that therefore have no natural run-off system. (And even where areas are mountainous and do have good run-off systems, the people “below” need to be protected from the run-off from the people “above”, as the residents of numerous Palestinian villages in the West Bank that lie beneath Israel’s hill-top settlements can amply testify.)
Different things are going on in Iraq and in Gaza. In Iraq the Bushists are guided– as in all their actions, domestic and overseas– by a profound antagonism toward the role of government as such in providing good governance. Hence all their quite irresponsible outsourcing of so many central functions of government to politically well-connected private contractors operating for profit. Now I’m sure that in Baghdad, the US administration and its local allies/proxies have signed numerous contracts over the past five years, under which contractors were charged with fixing the city’s water and sewage systems. But with the Bushists’ broad and wilfull disregard of governance issues, those contractors’ performance was never adequately monitored, and no-one ever stepped in to say, “Okay, you contractors haven’t performed, so we’ll send in the Army Corps of Engineers to get this vital job done.”
As a corollary, we should note that people who run military occupation regimes have wide leeway to exercise a wilfull disregard for the wellbeing of the residents of the occupied territories since they are in no way politically accountable to them. Hence the need for the provisions of international humanitarian law that specifically codify the responsibility that occupying powers have for the wellbeing of these residents.
In Iraq, the question of “responsibility” for water treatment and other basic functions of governance was certainly considerably muddied by the whole elaborate political play by which a supposed “sovereignty” was handed over to Iraqi political figures, though in many significant regards their ability to exercise true sovereignty remains highly circumscribed.
In Gaza, what has been happening on the sewage issue has been a certain amount of wilfull disregard of the Gazans’ strong interest in this aspect of their basic physical wellbeing by the Israeli occupation authorities. But in addition, Israel’s government has also been intentionally starving Gaza of the electric power and other inputs required even to mitigate the most threatening aspects of the sewage crisis.
Read, for example, this horrendous first-person account, published by Reuters Alertnet, of how the sewage crisis has been affecting the wellbeing of Gazans since at least last summer.
The writer, Manal, says this:
- It’s hard to imagine that someone could be excited about a water pumping station. But if you knew that this pumping station, if functioning, would serve as a barrier between your community and raw sewage then perhaps you would change your mind.
Six months ago this water pumping station opened right next to my home. It’s part of a system that serves 60 percent of the population in Gaza. We were pleased to hear this news as we had no other option before but to dump our untreated sewage in wells. As you can imagine, this posed an immense health hazard to all members of the community.
So when the news came that our sewage would be treated and we would no longer have to dump our own waste near to our homes, we breathed a sigh of relief.
The new station receives 30,000-40,000 cubic metres of waste water every day, and it should pump 120 cubic meters an hour through each of six water pumps. But this is Gaza. From the beginning, the station had only three pumps installed instead of the six planned. The closure of Gaza borders since June 2007 by the Israeli government has meant that the essential parts needed to build the remaining three could not come through.
Electricity cuts have been affecting the efficiency of the station. The emergency generator is not functioning well either as it needs maintenance but spare parts are lacking. The limited amount of fuel that is let into Gaza is not enough to run the generator for long hours.
… This station was supposed to be a blessing for the neighborhood. It turned out to be a curse, a health hazard for us all. And we are now facing a public health crisis.
Sewage water is filling the streets of the neighborhood surrounding the station, and flooding the nearby houses – the stench is unbearable.
Tenants in ground floor flats were forced to leave and move to live with neighbors in the higher floors. People have been reduced to using sand to absorb the sewage water in their houses.
The number of children who have been taken ill has increased considerably. Cases of diarrhea are mounting by the day. Even now children continue to play outside amongst the raw sewage – where else can they go?
What disgusts me is that this could all be prevented if the Israelis had just allowed the opening of one checkpoint to let the spare parts and fuel through.
Children started their new term this week even though there is sewage water in the neighborhood schools. As with all the problems brought about by the blockade, we have to continue our daily lives, otherwise we will have nothing left.
… I ask myself and I ask the international community – how can children get a good education in this environment? How can they look to a better future?
Read, too, the comments that the UN’s new Under-SG for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, made yesterday after he completed his first visit to Gaza:
- “I have been shocked by the grim and miserable things that I have seen and heard today, which are the result of current restrictions and the limitations on the number of goods that are being allowed into Gaza,’ said Mr. Holmes during a day-long visit to the Gaza Strip. ‘Around 80 percent of the population is dependant on food aid from international organizations. Poverty and unemployment are increasing and the private sector has more or less collapsed. Only ten percent of the amount of goods that entered Gaza a year ago are being permitted to enter now,” he said.
The complete chokehold that Israel has exercised over every physical interaction between Gaza and the outside world needs to be ended– NOW.
And in Iraq, the six million residents of Baghdad also need to be saved from the stinking, health-threatening effects of military occupation. Governance in Iraq needs to be handed back to a genuinely sovereign Iraqi government that is accountable to its own people, not to any outside power.
Military occupation rule: it is always, potentially, a threat to the wellbeing and even survival of people and the communities they live in. It was never envisaged in international law as being a longlasting means of governance, but only a short-term stop-gap arrangement pending conclusion of a final peace agreement. These two occupations need to end.
Two horrendous faces of the same coin.
Israeli tactics.
The cleanest and most ordered society I ever saw was communist Bulgaria. Say what you will about Soviet Republics, they knew how to make and keep their states clean.
um, Iraq??
Iraq….um
War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.
Martin Luther
There’s quite a bit of difference between the two stations. Kind of bizarre that one would equate the two, entirely dissimilar situations.
The Iraqis never declared war on anyone, and are the victims here. They don’t really have any easy way of ending the war. They don’t express the desire to destroy any other country. The Gazans are the ones who declared the war, and are responsible for it. They openly advocate the destruction of Israel (at least Hamas and those who voted for Hamas do), and the murder of all Israelis, including women and children. It’s the Israelis who are the victims. The Gazans have a very, very, very easy out, simply by recognizing Israel, the way the rest of the world did a long time ago, and the way international law and the UN requires. The Gazans could end their way and suffering in a heartbeat if they chose to do so, the Iraqis can’t. Recognize Israel and the electricity would be back on almost immediately. No brainer there, and no way to blame the Israelis. If they didn’t cut off the Gazans, they would continue to wage war.
Aha, …..Finally the Iraq’s Jihad Myths comes after five years suddenly its a “MYTHS”!!
So Helena who caused this mess?
I frankly agree with what Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. stated that the western world responsible for the corruptions of today Iraq as they imposed 13 years of sanction on Iraq that caused severally damages on their society need long time to remedy, also as we lived under the sanction’s years the swage and the water supply all affected from that time,US did bombed the swage plants and power station in 1991 but Iraq fixed them professionally (I wonder Scott’s Son what he can say to his father howmany Bridges he build or repaired in Iraq till now?)
I did say from the start those who oppose US occupation are real Iraqis who defending their land their homes their families from invader but for most western ME Specialists (Helena Included) keeps reporting writing “Iraq Insurgency”!! Serving their self-necessities hidden self-benefits.
I like the argument that made here between Jihadists when US helped them through the gangster OBL and support those Mujaheedin in Afghanistan but in Iraq turned to be these are “Terrorists” and insurgency fighters?
How easy manipulating stories and twisting the realties.
It took five years from Reuel Marc Gerecht who is supposedly a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former case officer for the CIA to come forward and figure out that these Iraqis fighting for their “male honour and female virtue is the coreinfuriating offences” and obviously for their land and country as same as any nations defending their land.
Iraq’s Jihad Myths
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former case officer for the CIA.
“In Gaza, what has been happening on the sewage issue has been a certain amount of wilfull disregard of the Gazans’ strong interest in this aspect of their basic physical wellbeing by the Israeli occupation authorities.”
Helena, while I agree with most of what you’ve written here, this sentence struck me as odd. Even if Gaza is still considered occupied territory under international law (which is a point I won’t revisit right now), there aren’t any actual Israeli occupation authorities that can build, manage or upgrade sewage treatment facilities in Gaza. Are you suggesting that Israel ought to re-establish occupation authorities and do these things?
Other than that, though, well said. End the siege.
The Israelis long ago wilfully destroyed the Gaza power station. Now they wilfully turn off the power supply from Israel. So there is no electricity to work the sewage pumps. Israeli tactics are shite unto the nations and they have taught the USA to do the same. It is like the line in “Last Tango in Paris” – “Go shit in Africa”. like the Zionist settlers who lived in an upstairs flat and opened up the sewage pipe so that the stuff would drop on the Palestinians in the flat below, to drive them out. It is the purest form of racist colonialism. What a shame that things have come to this point before they can be ended.
We can not put our blame on Jonathan Edelstein for what he stated and his lack of technical knowledge of sewage plants, maintaining working safe water systems and therefore also functioning sewage-disposal systems.
He is just a lawyer who knew nothing about technical things how these things works and what they need for functioning like electricity, fuel and other things.
BTW Jonathan Edelstein, did you forgot that IDF when pass through Palestinians land they destroying drinking waters wells (By putting explosives in them) belongs to Palestinians who digging for themselves in their farmland?
Wonder if you knew that or heard about them. And why they doing this fro human not Hamas long time ago in Gaza West bank and other places.
Jonathan, your Are you suggesting that Israel ought to re-establish occupation authorities and do these things?
No, I am not suggesting this. But I certainly think that Israel should allow the passage into Gaza of the parts needed to build the three additional pumps and the fuel needed to run all of them– plus cooperate in the implementation of whatever other measures are needed to ensure a longterm, as opposed to stopgap, solution to these water and sewage problems.
Jonathan likes to shuffle a sin of commission into a sin of omission, and then having done so, to claim that sins of omission don’t really count. I was taught that God reserved his greatest wrath for this kind of sophistry at His expense. To Hell!
Dominic, what Helena said was this:
You’ll notice I didn’t argue with what Helena said about Israel’s actual sins of commission – i.e., cutting off Gaza’s electricity and imposing a siege. Nor did I say or even imply that these things “don’t count.”
My quarrel was with her statement about “occupation authorities,” which don’t exist in Gaza, so it isn’t much use looking to them for sins of commission or omission. If that’s sophistry, take it for what you will.
And for what it’s worth, I agree with Helena’s prescriptions in her February 18 comment. I’ve advocated cooperative environmental solutions for years now. I’d go beyond that in fact: Israel (or Hamas and Egypt, if Israel won’t agree) needs to arrange full Palestinian control of the Gaza-Egypt border so that Gaza can have an avenue to seek its own long-term economic and environmental well-being.