Waters of contention

Jacob and Rachel by the well.

The ancient water cisterns on the hill above Ein Harod have always served the people who lived here. However our founding fathers were an exception, they chose a better more modern and reliable water supply system. From Byzantine times, perhaps earlier, the people who made their homes here cut into the ground rock to build cisterns for storing runoff surface water. For hundreds of years flocks were watered from these cisterns and in good years the people on the hill had enough water to irrigate a few crops. However water for domestic purposes was brought from the Harod stream in the valley. Hauling water was a toilsome, time consuming task that hadn’t changed since this hill was first inhabited. In fact the whole water economy was very much like it was in biblical times. Just the same, meeting by a well or watering hole, a recurring biblical theme, conjures up visions of pastoral bliss, even romantic encounters and has inspired artists through the ages. Reality is less romantic. Although we were promised a land flowing with milk and honey, it seems the Almighty wasn't so generous with water.

Descriptions of the Holy Land in the Bible, post biblical texts, journals recorded by mediaeval pilgrims and even nineteenth century travellers, depict arid inhospitable landscapes. "The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent." Mark Twain – Innocents Abroad. Our main watercourse the River Jordan flows 251 km from Lebanon to the Dead Sea. For most of its course the Jordan’s river bed is below sea level, limiting its use for irrigation. Most of the southern length of the river is too saline for use in agriculture. At the point where it enters the Dead Sea it is seventeen times more salty than sea water. In the past the Jordan River, a few tributaries, a lake we call a sea, and a number of artesian wells made up most of our water sources. Hardly the stuff to reclaim the homeland with.

Increasing Jewish immigration during the British Mandate period with a parallel increase in the Arab population, both the indigenous and migrants from neighbouring states, strained water resources necessitating a better system of water management.

In the late 1930s and mid-1940s, Transjordan and the World Zionist Organisation commissioned mutually exclusive competing water resource studies. The Transjordanian study, performed by Michael G. Ionides, concluded that the available water resources are not sufficient to sustain a Jewish state which would be the destination for Jewish immigration. The Zionist study, by the American engineer Walter Clay Lowdermilk, concluded that by diverting water from the Jordan basin to support agriculture and residential development in the Negev, a Jewish state supporting 4 million new immigrants would be sustainable. A few years after his survey Lowdermilk published a book called Palestine, Land of Promise. Regarding the Jewish settlements he wrote, “Defying great hardships and applying the principles of cooperation and soil conservation they have demonstrated the finest reclamation of old lands that I have seen in three continents. They have done this by the application of science, industry and devotion to the problems of reclaiming lands, draining swamps, improving agriculture and livestock and creating new industries. All this was done against great odds and with sacrificial devotion to the ideal of redeeming the Promised Land.” At the end of the 1948 Arab Israeli War with the signing of the General Armistice Agreements in 1949, both Israel and Jordan embarked on implementing their competing initiatives to utilise the water resources in the areas under their control.

The first "Master Plan for Irrigation in Israel" was drafted in 1950 and approved by a board of consultants in 1956. The main component of the Master Plan was the construction of the Israeli National Water Carrier (NWC). In 1953, Israel began construction of a water carrier to take water from the Sea of Galilee to the country's populated centre as well as the south of the country, while Jordan concluded an agreement with Syria, known as the Bunger plan, to dam the Yarmouk river and utilise its waters to irrigate Jordanian territory. However before the plan could be implemented a clash between Israeli and Syrian forces caused severe damage to the Syrian engineering infrastructure and brought the project to a halt. President Eisenhower dispatched Ambassador Johnston to the region to work out a plan that would regulate water usage. Thirty years later an analysis conducted by the CIA placed the Middle East on the list of possible conflict zones related to disagreement over sharing water resources. The report drawn up by the Agency stated that more than a fifth of the region’s population lacks access to adequate potable water and more than a third of the population lacks appropriate sanitation.

Last Thursday my wife and I spent the day with our daughter Irit by the Sea of Galilee. While sipping coffee at Beit Gavriel on the shores of the lake I contemplated our frightening dependence on its waters.

About 40 percent of the water we use is pumped from the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Another 30 percent comes from the western and northeastern aquifers of the mountain aquifer system. The western and northeastern aquifers straddle the Green Line that separates Israel from the West Bank, but most of the stored water is under pre-1967 Israel, making it mostly accessible only to Israel. Being a country that has been at constant war with the Palestinians, water rights are a serious impediment affecting an amicable agreement. The remaining 30 percent comes from a combination of natural springs, desalination plants and man made reservoirs used mainly for replenishing the aquifers.

Before the Oslo agreements of 1993, water rights belonged solely to Israel. With the responsibility for millions of people, Israelis and Palestinians, Israel promised safe drinking water to all the people of the region. After 1993, with the signing of the Oslo agreements, Palestinians were allowed to have a share of the water that is under and flows through Israel. There were still problems building the infrastructure that was to carry the water. The Palestine Authority motivated by political reasons did not want an Israeli water infrastructure. To obviate this problem the Oslo II agreement allocated two-thirds of the infrastructure development to the Palestinians and one-third to Israel.

After Oslo II was signed, Israel moved very quickly to carry out its part of the agreement, however the Palestinian Authority worked slowly and neglected its obligations. In many places, little or nothing was done to create a Palestinian water infrastructure The PA has many Israeli built wells but has been slow to pipe water to the people under its jurisdiction. There is also significant water loss due to corrosion in the older inefficient water systems.

I realise that I have written about this in the past. Nevertheless, I repeat it here because the French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has just published an unprecedented report accusing Israel of implementing “apartheid” in its allocation of water in Judea and Samaria.

Italian journalist Giulio Meotti called the accusations slanderous. He said, "The report, authored by Socialist Party MP Jean Glavany, is a powerful blood libel against the Jews, because it establishes the false comparison between Palestinians and South Africa’s blacks, who were obliged to use separate and neglected water sources." Meotti reminded his readers that when Jordan occupied the West Bank between1948 and 1967, some 80% of the Arab population was not connected to a water network. Since 1967 Israel has linked almost all Arab communities in Judea and Samaria with local water grids, so that now 90% of homes there have indoor plumbing. The total water supply to that region has doubled from 64 million cubic metres a year to 120 million as a result of improved water access.

In 2004, while addressing an international conference on water conservation a representative of the Israeli Water Commission proposed allocating 50 million m³/year from the desalination plant in Hadera for the exclusive supply of up to one million Palestinians in the northern West Bank. Funding for the project was obtained, but the Palestinian Authority rejected the proposal. Some experts argue that water supplies in the region could simply be used more efficiently. Jordan, for instance, could use its Yarmuk supply first for drinking water rather than for irrigation, and then recycle urban waste water to keep the crops growing, as Israel does.

Israeli representatives assert meanwhile that the debate over water has been skewed by the Arabs' emphasis on disparities in consumption.

Agronomist Avraham Katz-Oz, formerly Israeli Minister of Agriculture, has negotiated with the Palestinian Authority regarding water sharing. He illustrated how the debate has been distorted." A person living in a high-rise apartment building in Tel Aviv with a sink, dishwasher, washing machine, shower and toilet is likely to use a lot more water than someone in a Palestinian refugee camp where such amenities are minimal. I'm not saying that's good, but that disparity is a socioeconomic problem -- it's not a water problem." Environmental groups, such as the Israel Union for Environmental Defence, have called for a moratorium on new desalination plants, beyond the ones already in the advanced bidding stages. "We believe that even in 2020, we can make do with 315 million cubic metres of desalinated annually ", they say. Their report calls for water conservation, the treatment of wastewater and the recycling of grey water (domestic waste water other than toilet effluent), as well as using construction techniques that allow rainwater to permeate the surface to reach the aquifers. The authors of the report claim that this would reduce the need for massive desalination of seawater.

There have always been adherers to a conservative approach concerning our water economy. These diehards claim that there is a cyclic pattern of droughts and years blessed with more than average precipitation. The corollary of that opinion is to conserve water both during droughts and rainy years. Replenish the aquifers, build sewerage filtration plants, but avoid building desalination plants. Forcing people to stop watering their lawns and persuading farmers to cut back on irrigated crops has never been popular. The opposition to desalination plants stems from cost and environmental factors. However, newer improved technology has made desalination affordable and damage caused to the environment minimal.

At present Israel leads the world in water conservation technology, research and development of innovative applications, desalination and recycling sewerage. Our agronomists are pioneering innovative irrigation techniques, notably drip irrigation. This technology has developed into a lucrative export branch. An Israeli consortium unveiled the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant near Hadera recently. It is the third in a series of five desalination plants being built over the next few years that will eventually supply Israel with about 750 million cubic metres of water.

Water need not be a contentious issue. Just the same a biblical reference to Moses’ sin at the “waters of contention” (Numbers 20:2-13) is a potentially explosive matter. I can understand the Palestinian reluctance to be linked to an Israeli desalination plant. A few years ago a proposal to import water from Turkey was a viable option. Then we enjoyed good relations with Turkey and the cost of imported water was not prohibitive. However, some Israelis feared dependency on water from an outside source. At that time we had a rainy winter so the proposal was shelved. In addition to selling water to the Palestinians we will have enough water to supply the Jordanians as well. The continuous flow of water to these potential customers can be guaranteed by the “Quartet” or another international body. Haggling over rain in the Judean hills on the west side of the watershed that ends up in the aquifer on our side of the Green Line is futile. The Palestinians could easily obtain foreign grants for sewerage reclamation and improvement of their water economy. However, like it or not they will always be dependent on water from an external source.

The weather forecast for the weekend predicts intermittent showers.

Rain or shine, have a good weekend.

Beni 26^th of January, 2012.