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About this episode

Drying up Palestine is a 28-minute documentary by Rima Essa and Peter Snowdon about water access issues in the occupied West Bank. The film was produced by Gourna Films for the Palestinian NGO House of Water and Environment. It describes the stresses and strains imposed on Palestinan society by Israel's almost total control over water resources in the occupied territories. The sequences form an arc covering the main episodes in the history of this water grab from 1967 to the present day.After a brief prologue setting the scene, chapter one begins in Bardala, a village in the Jordan Valley, whose traditional water sources were dried up by the first deep wells drilled by the Israelis in the mid-70s to supply the agricultural settlements they were establishing at that time. The villagers describe the impact that this has had on their lives and livelihoods to the present day. The shadow of more recent forms of harrassment is never far from their minds.

• Release Date

  Mar 20, 2008

• Runtime

  07:06:18