Palestinians fear for ancient West Bank water source
Bedouin Falah Hedawa herds sheep in the Rashayida area, in the desert between the West Bank town of Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, July 25, 2011. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman* Israel demolishes cisterns restored to harvest rainwater
* Old cisterns, many ancient, rehabilitated in recent years
* Israel West Bank authority says cisterns in firing zones
* Bedouin say Israel aims to drive them off land
By Tom Perry
RASHAYIDA, West Bank, July 28 (Reuters) - Hewn from rock, the cavernous cisterns which dot the desert beyond Bethlehem have for centuries harvested winter rain to provide shepherds and their flocks with water through summer.
Under a baking sun, an elderly Bedouin explains how cisterns he remembers from childhood, many of them restored to full working order in the last few years, are once again helping his goat-herding community to survive.
That, he concludes, is why the Israeli authorities who control the West Bank have demolished at least three in the area since November.
"Maybe they are doing this to make us leave. We will not leave," said Falah Hedawa, 64, sitting on cushions in his tent home pitched in the hills that slope down to the Dead Sea.
Out into the desert, a stagnant pool marked the spot where one of the cisterns, chiselled out of a hillside, had stood until its recent demolition. A mud trail on the otherwise dry ground indicated where the water inside had drained away towards a wadi, a valley which becomes a river when the rain falls.
Israel has demolished 20 rainwater collection cisterns in the West Bank in the first half of this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories.
Their razing is part of a marked acceleration in demolitions of Palestinian structures...READ MORE
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