A local Palestinian official in the Negev desert, south of Palestine occupied in 1948, accused the occupation of using water as a weapon in order to displace people of Negev aiming to take control of their lands.
The head of Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), Ibrahim Alwakili, said that Israel deliberately denies water supply to the Arab Bedouins in the Negev causing daily suffering for more than 70 thousand people.
Hundreds of unrecognized Palestinian villagers in the Negev, demonstrated, on Sunday, outside the Israeli water company "Mekorot" in Beersheba protesting against the raising of water prices in these villages, and for not providing a regular supply of water.
Alwakili told Quds press that only one or two out of one hundred requests filed by Arab citizens in the Negev to get water are accepted for racial reasons.
He also pointed out that the occupation authorities "sell water to the Jewish citizen at prices much lower compared with the high prices they sell it to the Palestinian people in the Negev."
He also confirmed that denying water to Arabs is not due to the water shortage but due to the Israeli racist measures because water mains pass under those Arab villages and next to them, for the benefit of Israeli settlements, but Arab villages are deprived regular water supply even when mains pass meters away from Arab homes.
