In summer heat, East Jerusalem suburb receives water for only 12 hours a week

Anger has been mounting over the past weeks in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab as Palestinian residents have seen their water supply reduced to just 12 hours a week.

Locals are informed in advance of when they can open their faucets, and during those few hours, they must plan for the whole family to shower, do their laundry, and clean their homes.

Many are forced to purchase water from private suppliers at a high cost to cope with the shortages during the peak of the summer heat.

“It’s untenable,” village council chairman Samir Abu Khalaf told The Times of Israel. “We are residents of the Jerusalem municipality, pay council taxes, and Israeli taxes. We should be receiving the same rights and services as all other residents.”

Hassan Halawani, who moved to the neighborhood six years ago, concurred: “There is no other developed country in the world that has to cope with a water crisis like the one we have been experiencing in Kafr Aqab.”

The water shortage is the latest in a long series of disruptions that affect the densely populated area, Jerusalem’s northernmost suburb, located within the municipal borders but beyond the security barrier erected during the Second Intifada.

Today, Kafr Aqab has practically merged with the metropolitan area of nearby Ramallah, but it is still administratively part of the Israeli capital, which on paper is responsible for providing basic services to its residents.

A no-man’s-land inside Jerusalem

Israel captured East Jerusalem, which had been under Jordanian control, during the 1967 Six Day War, and formally annexed it in 1980. On a map of the city, the neighborhood of Kafr Aqab appears disconnected from the rest of the city, jutting far to the north from other neighborhoods.

The rationale behind its incorporation into the city’s limits is that it abuts the Qalandiya airport, built by the British in 1920. After 1967, Israeli authorities had a vision of returning an international airport to the reunified capital, but foreign airlines boycotted it. It remained in use as a domestic airport until the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

“Israel wanted to retain the land, but not the population,” said Aviv Tatarsky from the left-wing nonprofit Ir Amim, which tracks government policies in East Jerusalem.

The construction of the security barrier between Israel and parts of the West Bank during the Second Intifada cut through the outer parts of East Jerusalem, leaving some areas outside, including Kafr Aqab.

Because of its location, over the past two decades, Israeli authorities have become lax in enforcing the law in Kafr Aqab, for good or bad.

While in the rest of East Jerusalem — and in Arab towns in Israel in general — building permits are very difficult to come by, Kafr Aqab has witnessed a massive surge in illicit construction, with many residential high-rises reaching 10 to 15 stories.

Apartments are affordable and attractive for families and young couples looking to maintain their Jerusalem residency. Most East Jerusalem Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and would lose their right to live in the city if they moved out of the municipal boundaries for a prolonged period.

From a green rural area with only a few thousand inhabitants in 1967, Kafr Aqab today is home to up to one-third of Jerusalem’s 360,000 Arab residents.

Israeli authorities do not provide reliable demographic data for the area (according to the latest official figure, from 2017, it has only 24,000 inhabitants), but residents and nonprofits estimate the population to be between 80,000 and 120,000. The high numbers are confirmed when taking a quick glance from the rooftop of one of the many high-rises. A sea of towering buildings stretches in every direction.

Real estate prices in the sprawling suburb are significantly lower than in the rest of East Jerusalem — residents report that apartments are for sale at NIS 600,000 (slightly above $160,000), compared to NIS 2.5-3 million ($680,000-$815,000) across the barrier.

And unlike Arab communities inside Israel, where crackdowns are frequent on the rampant illegal construction, buildings in Kafr Aqab are not at risk of demolition thanks to lax law enforcement.

Residents enjoy the lower cost of living and proximity to both Jerusalem and Ramallah, but life here also presents countless difficulties. The only way into Jerusalem is through the Qalandiya military checkpoint, which is plagued by massive traffic jams at nearly every time of day.

The passage was closed for about two months after the October 7 Hamas onslaught, cutting residents off from their workplaces, families, and medical facilities.

Municipal services in the neighborhood are scarcer than in the rest of the city. Garbage collection is less frequent, and the police rarely venture inside, giving the area a reputation as a no-man’s-land and a lawless zone. Because of the poor infrastructure and unpaved roads, Kafr Aqab is often flooded by winter rains.

Who is responsible for the water supply?

The summer water shortage is a recurrent problem that has reached unprecedented levels this year. There is no clear culprit for the crisis.

Unlike in the rest of East Jerusalem, which receives water from the municipal supplier Hagihon, residents of Kafr Aqab are served by a Palestinian water company based in Ramallah called “Jerusalem Water Undertaking,” which buys water from the Israeli state-owned company Mekorot.

The Jerusalem Water Undertaking distributes water to other areas in the West Bank in proportion to the local population. However, because the actual number of residents in Kafr Aqab is much higher than official figures — which Palestinian authorities cannot verify, since the area is not under their jurisdiction  — the amount of water it receives is not commensurate with its exploding populace.

To make up for the ongoing water shortage, residents have resorted to buying large water tanks to guarantee a supply when the pipes are empty. Each container has a capacity of 1,500 liters (396 gallons) and costs NIS 1,500 ($400) per month.

These tanks are placed by the dozens on the rooftops of 10- or 15-story buildings, placing a burden of dozens of tons of weight on structures built without permits, posing a danger to their stability. Activists say they are a ticking time bomb, and it’s only a question of time before a rooftop collapses.

As the crisis persists, residents have been pressuring authorities to find a permanent solution. On Saturdays, some have been protesting outside the local branch of the Palestinian water company to increase the allocated amount, but their foremost demand is to be connected to the Jerusalem municipal network and receive water from Hagihon.

That, however, would require a decision from the Israel Water Authority, the Israeli government’s regulating body.

The municipality of Jerusalem has been conducting regular meetings with Kafr Aqab community representatives to find solutions, a spokesperson for Mayor Moshe Lion said, as the administration aims to “take responsibility for the entire united city of Jerusalem.” The mayor’s office blamed the “irresponsible behavior of the Palestinian Authority” for the current shortages.

The Israel Water Authority reiterated, in response to an inquiry by The Times of Israel, that the water supply to Kufr Aqab is the responsibility of the Ramallah-based Jerusalem Water Undertaking, which did not respond to a request for comments.

The authority added that the law prohibits supplying water to illegal structures, but that in view of the situation, an infrastructure development has been approved to increase the amount pumped to this area, expected to be completed in 2026.

It is not clear, however, whether the Palestinian company would increase its allocation to Kafr Aqab even if it receives a larger supply from Israel. An activist who declined to be named reported that three weeks ago, residents demanded that the Ramallah company sign a written guarantee that it would pass on the increase to its consumers in Kafr Aqab, but the latter has refused to make that pledge.

The issue is compounded by the fact that communications between the company and Israeli authorities have all but broken down after October 7, as Palestinian entities avoid “normalization” activities with Israel, the activist added.

Should the Palestinian supplier make that commitment, then Mekorot, the company that distributes the water under the Israeli Water Authority, has already agreed behind closed doors to increase its allocation, the activist said.

In the meantime, the crisis has escalated to the Supreme Court and the Knesset.

On August 7, 2024, the residents of Kafr Aqab, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Ir Amim petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding a regular water supply in the neighborhood. The petition argued that, rather than taking responsibility, the authorities were shifting the burden to each other and the Palestinian Authority, thereby evading their legal obligations.

At the Knesset, a debate on the subject was held on August 11 in the Finance subcommittee for oversight of the water system, the second in two months. The subcommittee is chaired by Ze’ev Elkin, a right-wing MK who broke away from Likud in 2020 and sits today in the ranks of the opposition in the National Unity Party.

The debate underscored the extent to which Israeli authorities have neglected the problem. Three representatives from the Israel Water Authority, the Jerusalem municipality and the city’s water company Hagihon respectively could not say who does the maintenance work for the water pipes in Kafr Aqab (since the Palestinian water company is not authorized to operate in Israeli territory).

Behind the scenes and the finger-pointing, however, stakeholders are trying to come up with temporary and permanent solutions to the crisis.

Sondos Alhoot, who headed an Arab slate that ran in Jerusalem’s latest municipal elections, has been leading an initiative to explore possible answers to the problem with residents and authorities. Yossi Abramowitz, an activist in Alhoot’s team, told The Times of Israel that an immediate fix that is being evaluated would see Jerusalem’s municipal water supplier Hagihon send dozens of water trucks into Kafr Aqab every day to provide drinking water to residents.

Abramowitz highlighted how the lack of political will to solve the problem and the consequent discrimination and neglect of tens of thousands of Jerusalem residents pose a concrete risk of losing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the capital.

A more futuristic option that is being considered is to deploy Israeli cutting-edge technology to extract water from the air — so-called AWG systems (air water generator).

In the medium and longer term, Hagihon could rent the Kafr Aqab pipe network from the Palestinian company at a symbolic price, and attach it to the distribution system of a new Haredi neighborhood that is under construction on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport, adjacent to Kafr Aqab.

While there still is no viable quick solution to the pressing problem, it is clear that some politicians are taking note of its absurdity: At the August 11 Finance subcommittee meeting, Elkin opened the discussion by saying starkly, “It cannot be that in 2024 the water supply to an Israeli neighborhood is worse than that in Gaza, which is in a state of war.”