This article was originally published by the Haaretz and is republished with permission.

Palestinians attend a rally marking the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba in the West Bank city of Hebron. (Mamoun Wazwaz, Maan Images)

The water is the same but the children are not. Diving into the pool is just as daring and dangerous as it used to be, the water just as stagnant, the pool just as spectacular, but now there are fish. Many fish, mainly fingerlings, dart about, as many as 20,000 according to Anan al-Mahani, a fisherman from the village who breeds them.

The vast, ancient pool, built generations ago to store water, which becomes a pitiful day camp for the children of Karmel in the summer, has now also become a fish pond. Exactly eight years ago, photographer Miki Kratsman and I happened on this place by chance. Kratsmans series of photos won him acclaim. Back then, in the July 7, 2000 issue of Haaretz Magazine, I wrote: "Our hearts skip a beat: The sight is hallucinatory. The children stand atop the walls, at least 10 meters high, which surround the terrifying reservoir, and leap out into space. The bottom seems to be covered with grass. Only when the children land on the green carpet does it become apparent that this is not a lawn, but water, covered with a thick layer of green scum. When they rise from the depths, black bubbles surround their ascending heads, and their bodies are covered with a layer of green slime. Seen from above, the sight of their dark heads poking through the green is very strange. The risky jump, the stench, the filthy water; this is summer camp for the children of Karmel, an ancient Palestinian village in the Hebron hills."

This week we returned to the fetid site. The algae carpet is gone, eaten by the fish, and the black water has turned green. All the rest is unchanged. Between the summer of 2000 and the summer of 2008, the children of Karmel continued to lead a wretched existence. The homes here have no running water. In the pool fish, children and floating refuse mix.

A dead fish floats on the surface, a rainbow-colored dragonfly circles lazily above it. Three boys sit on the large stone wall from which their friends dive into the water, holding fishing lines. We were astonished to see what they caught in the arid southern Hebron hills.

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Mahani, 22, was born and raised in Karmel. He worked in Israel for years, planting and picking strawberries in the kibbutzim and moshavim near the border with the Gaza strip and tending public parks in Dimona. He pronounces it "dimiyona", unwittingly punning on the Hebrew word for imagination. He was arrested last year and jailed for six months because he had no entry permit, because he had the effrontery to work in Israel. Now he is trying to eke out a living from this pool, until he succumbs once more to the temptation to sneak into Israel.

Since Mahanis release about three weeks ago he has been here, sitting at the edge of the green reservoir, waiting for fish. Yesterday he caught four, the day before, six, today nothing yet. It all depends on the situation of the fish, he explains.

All the fish belong to him, he adds, because he introduced them to the pool, seven years ago. A friend from Hebron advised him to throw a few fish into the green slime, and now the water is teeming with their offspring. The unemployed former prisoner became a full-time fisherman with his own start-up.

"Anyone can fish here. Two or three fish for the house is fine. But anything more is mine. Its not my private pond, but I brought the fish. I am the only one who is allowed to fish a lot. If the children kill them for no reason, I tell them haram [forbidden], if youre not taking them home then you shouldn?t take them out of the water."

But Mahani plans to return to Israel to find work. The dubious fishing industry of Karmel is not enough to feed his family. In the meantime, he says, a Dimona plant nursery has already ordered fish and yesterday he hooked four big ones and sold them for NIS 50 each to villagers. ?In Dimona and Beer Sheva they sell for NIS 120, he says ruefully.

He does not dare enter the water. "The water is disgusting to swim in. If this pool were for Jews, it wouldnt be like this. They would organize it the right way. I was in Dimona and I saw what kind of pools they have there. Amazing ones."

Its cast-your-pal-in-the-waters time: The children who have been diving push in one of their friends who was afraid to go in. He falls through the air, shouting, and disappears into the green liquid. A few seconds later he bobs to the surface, terrified, and somehow floats toward the stone stairs that emerge from the reservoir. Many of the children have tied plastic containers ; empty mineral water or olive oil bottles; around their waists, as floats. One boy stuffed a bottle into his shorts, so the others wouldnt see.

There have been a few drownings here over the years, the last in 2003 when Nadar Thakamash, 22, plunged to his death. Many of the divers have injured themselves hitting the side of the pool, and its said that skin and intestinal diseases can also be contracted here. There is no lifeguard or any means of purifying the stagnant water, of course, but that does not deter the children or their parents. There is a more hospitable swimming pool in nearby Beita, but it costs NIS 5 for a child and NIS 10 for an adult, too much for the children of Karmel.

Bone-dry, the village does not have a single tree, flower or bush. The faucets are dry. Water is supplied every two or three months, so the people rely on the rainwater that collects in wells during rainy winters and on the water brought in by tractors hauling water tanks and sold at exorbitant prices: 20 cubic meters for NIS 300, four cubic meters for NIS 100; not enough to sustain a large family with sheep and goats for three days. Anyone who wants to feast his eyes on lush green is invited to look into the distance, at the settlements of Maon and Carmel, the uninvited neighbors. Quiet Carmel, and Maon, whose residents harass the Palestinian villagers, have all the water they need.

More screams as the unfortunate boy is again thrown into the water.

"I would like to plant grass and flowers here, but our municipalitys financial situation is the pits," says Ahmad Mahamara, another labor refugee from Israel who picked up Hebrew slang. Mahamara, 38, hops on one leg, wearing a gray galabiya. He too worked for years in Israel. A month ago, he fell from a building he was working on, in Beit Shemesh, and seriously injured his leg. Since then he has been stuck in the village and of course his employer refuses to compensate him for the work accident. He does not know whether he will return to work: "Maybe they finished building the house."

Since his injury he has been coming to the pool every day to keep an eye on the children who are belly-flopping loudly into the water, and also making sure his youngest son, Thamar, doesnt fall in. Next summer, when Thamar is two and a half, he will let him play at the site. "Even if he falls in the other children will get him out," the toddlers father says. Rifaat, Thamars older brother, has long since entered the water.

"Kiryat Shmona, Kiryat Yovel, what can I tell you; I worked everywhere in Israel," Mahamara says. "I grew up in this pool, and my father grew up in this pool. The water is dirty. There are no filters. In Israel they put stuff into the water that cleans all this garbage. Here, we sometimes put in diesel oil or gasoline to clean it. But the water has a sickness. The water here is sick. There is no one to clean the water and no one to watch over the children that fall. Exactly where we are standing now, a boy fell and died in 1980. Exactly here, below us."

Radi Jibril, the village rich man, is now building locker rooms for the pool. Well, "locker rooms" is an exaggeration, and so is "now." He has been building them for years. Three workers stand in the broiling sun, and attach cut marble stones to the concrete. Stone after stone, all by hand. They cut each stone by hand, after fitting the size. It seems to me that they were building here eight years ago, too. When the work is done, an entry fee will be charged. Anan, the fisherman, is not worried: "Even if they organize the pool, they wont finish for another two-three years. For five years they have been saying they will get it together. If they have a little money they put in a few more stones, until the money runs out, and then they don?t do anything. This is a beautiful place, good air, but we would like someone to organize it."

A few children jump in fully clothed, others in shorts, their skin scarlet from hours in the sun. Most of them keep themselves afloat somehow rather than actually swimming. Girls are not allowed into the water, by order of tradition. The village tradition also maintains that the pool has been here since the time of Moses, no less. "I heard it from my grandfather, who heard it from his grandfather, that it is from the days of Moses," Mahamara says. No one here knows why the reservoir was built in the first place.

Mahamara's children come from the village carrying a steaming kettle of tea. Sometimes on Fridays, settlers from Maon come to the pool. "They have no law. Whenever they want, they jump in wherever they want. They jump on every house they want here. Wherever they want, they jump."