Palestinians are protesting what they call an "attack by Israeli forces on the water sources of the village of Duma." Apparently, the Palestinians tried to increase the flow of water from Ein Duma, through a new pipeline, and Israel cut off the connection. Why did she cut? Because it is the main power in the West Bank, and as such, it is the de facto governor of all water sources. However, Israel cannot do as it pleases in the West Bank, and is subject to international law, and agreements with the Palestinians regarding water distribution, and is committed to the Joint Water Committee set up after the Oslo Accords. Yet the reality is complex in the West Bank, Palestinians see Israel as an occupier, Israelis see it as returning to its historical sovereignty.
The Palestinians' demand to govern their water resources entails an emotional and turbulent struggle, with which every person can understand and identify. Israel and Israelis have also waged such struggles in the past, for example the Israeli readiness to go to war against Syria when Syria tried to divert the sources of the Jordan River in the 1960s. Almost every Israeli thought at the time that this was a just cause for declaring war, why? Because the threat of water to life, is absolute. It has no balance of horror. This is purely horror. One explanation is that the water crisis around the sources of the Jordan River led to the Six Day War. Indeed, since the end of the war, the sources of the Jordan have been under Israeli control.
The Palestinian emotional struggle, like any water struggle, causes truth and falsehood to mingle. For example, the claim we reported here about three months ago, according to which a water well in the Bethlehem area designated for Palestinians, is used by the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem, is correct. On the other hand, about two weeks ago, a claim came to our table that the village of Uja in the Jordan Valley receives half the amount of water that Jewish communities receive on average. From examining the data, we received, it became clear to us that Ujah receives relatively the amount of water that Tel Aviv receives, an increase of about 20 percent as it should be received in a particularly hot area. But the problem lies in the word "accepting." Why does Uja need to get water from someone? Ujah, like all Arab localities, should not receive water from anyone, but rather divide the water sources available to it by virtue of being part of a political entity.

Israel does not have to leave the matter of water to a water committee, and to professional agreements and technical treatment. This is perhaps the most obvious emotional political issue. Its solution will not bring peace though, but it will bring a lot of happy people to the West Bank. And happy people push for reconciliation and are willing to compromise. Therefore, Yair Lapid now has a golden opportunity for his 15 minutes of glory in the Prime Minister's Office: not to conduct constitutive political activities, such as striving for peace agreements, since these do not have sufficient political support. But on the other hand, to conduct an emotional political activity with depth and weight that does not attract a destructive political counter-reaction, but its power in the process of reconciliation is essential. A conversation with Abu Mazen will open the process, which will take the issue of water out of the hands of engineers and committee members. If he does, for the first time, Yair Lapid will stop being a former journalist, and become a statesman.