THE WATER IS HERE!

In our house we have enough underground water storage to supply us and the 8 families living in the apartments for up to 40 days. The government used to give the city every 15 days for 2 days but for the last 40 days the city did not distribute water because of problems they are having with the water wells. Jiries was forced to buy more water to keep it above the pump minimum in the storage tank. It cost him $60 for a truckload of water, and it takes 3 trucks to fill up the storage. Now, rumor has it that the entire district of Bethlehem will not receive water for at least another month.

Efrat (which is Hebrew for Bethlehem) and Jebel Abughaimim (known to the Israelis as Har Homa) are the settlements next door that take 2/3 of the water from the wells in Bethlehem. The settlers get running water 24 hours a day and they have more than enough to fill all of their swimming pools. Note: the wells in Bethlehem supply the districts of Hebron and Bethlehem, which is over 600,000 people altogether, but all of those people only receive 1/3 of the water from the wells on THEIR land.

Jiries would like to point out that USAID is a corrupted agency because instead of drilling wells and building better pumps it is funneling money to unnecessesary thing in the area. Also, he predicts that the next major regional war will be over water.

Tonight we are going to walk to a restaurant for dinner and then I am going to bed early since tomorrow I will be in Jericho with the Wildlife Society all day. I will write about our adventures with the Americans when the big week is over. Until then, water!!