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If common sense
prevails
Gershon
Baskin and Nader el Khatib, respectively co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center
for Research and Information and director of the Bethlehem-based Water Environment
Development Organization |
Can this trade expand? Farmers setting up irrigation for agriculture in Jiftlik Valley,
near Nablus.
Jordan
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If
you listen to water, learn its language, then water will bring you knowledge of all
beings and living things.
Yves
Thériault, Canadian writer (1915-1983)
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For years, thirsty governments in the Middle East have been trading in “virtual water” |
Despite
sealed borders and gunfire, Israeli and Palestinian experts continue to meet on the
sidelines in an attempt to hammer out
a way of sharing their blue gold
As the violence between
Israelis and Palestinians spirals and cooperation is considered an act of treason,
both sides continue to work together on a single issue: water. In February, six months
after the intifada erupted, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) jointly called
upon their people to keep water and wastewater infrastructure out of the cycle of
destruction. The reason is simple: both of their systems are intertwined.
The Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, set up under the Oslo Agreements,
is probably the only common framework to survive the past year. Despite sealed borders
and gunfire, the committee regularly meets to deliver water in the West Bank, where
many wells and springs have gone dry, especially as the current drought scorches
a second year. Talks and action revolve around practical issues–repairing pipes or
delivering chlorine. Yet plans to construct new wells, which the Palestinians desperately
need and were promised in Oslo, have been abandoned. The violence of the past year
has killed the formal discussions on redistributing water supplies and recognizing
Palestinian sovereign rights over natural resources. The Israeli government no longer
considers water to be a technical issue but a matter of national security. According
to the hawks, Israel’s very existence depends upon military and political control
of the Palestinian Territories, especially the West Bank which provides for 25 percent
of Israeli water needs.
Talking
dollars and cents
This obsession with security is certainly not new in Israel. Even before the intifada,
environmental issues were cast as threats, sold to the public as “water security”
or “food security.” The Western press in particular has towed this line, peddling
stories about water inevitably killing prospects for peace. Yet the truth of the
matter is that hydrologists and civil engineers on both sides have been steadily
developing possible long-term agreements. While formal discussions of these plans
are now taboo, technicians and government experts from across the region are continuing
to meet quietly, beyond the reach of hawks on all sides. Here is an outline of a
plan we have in mind.
First a bit of background. Palestinians each have about 85 cubic metres per year
for all of their needs–domestic, industry and agriculture. Average use among Israelis
is 447 cubic metres per year. In the West Bank, about 25 percent of the population
doesn’t have running water, even though this area is relatively rich in groundwater
thanks to the Mountain Aquifer, from which Israel pumps about 85 percent of its yield.
Here lies the heart of the dispute.
The famous Mountain Aquifer actually consists of three different ones–situated in
the east, northwest and west of the mountain. The media tends to paint the Eastern
Aquifer as a political minefield, yet the path to resolution is far from tortuous.
The Palestinians can rightfully claim absolute sovereignty over the aquifer which
lies entirely within their territory. By installing pumps after 1967, Israel has
apparently contravened international rules concerning military occupation. The decision
to give up this aquifer is not as painful as it might seem. It is the poorest of
the three in terms of water quantity and quality.
The rest is not so clear-cut, as seen with the Western Aquifer, the largest of the
three. About 80 percent of the recharge basin–the area in which rain and streams
trickle down into the aquifer–lies in Palestine. However, that water naturally flows
underground into Israel, where most of it is pumped.
Palestinians claim that they own the water because it originates in their territory.
At the same time, Israelis invoke the cardinal international right of historic use–they
were the first to tap into and develop this source about 80 years ago through an
agreement with the British Mandate (in a concession to a Jewish contractor).
Debates over water rights generally turn in circles. While there is clearly a need
to recognize both sides’ sovereign rights to natural resources, international law
and common sense directs us to find a “reasonable and equitable” use of the water.
How do you determine a fair deal? You cannot quantify a right to water, but you can
calculate the need for it.
Everyone–Palestinians and Israelis–should be entitled to a minimum of 100 metres3
per year for domestic and industrial use. To do this, Israel would have to reallocate
100 to 200 more million metres3 of water each year to Palestinians. No state leader
wants to give up control over a resource, especially one so precious and politically
explosive as water. But there is another way of evaluating the trade-off: in dollars
and cents.
Water equals money. Each cubic metre of water in Israel is worth an estimated $0.20/m3.
So the water in dispute amounts to between $20-40 million a year–or about 0.05 percent
of Israeli GDP. This isn’t worth fighting over. It is money well spent.
The economic value of water is obviously not new in the Middle East. For years, thirsty
governments have been trading in “virtual water”–economists actually calculate the
water it takes to grow fruit and vegetables. So by importing tomatoes and oranges,
for example, governments are actually buying cheap, bio-degradable packets of water.
It’s a lot easier and cheaper to import a tonne of fruit and vegetables than the
water it takes to grow it.
We want to expand this trade. To begin with, Israeli farmers can no longer earn a
living by feeding their country, which is accustomed to a costly Western lifestyle.
Not so for the Palestinians. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority currently
allocate about 80 percent of their respective water supplies to agriculture. In Israel,
farmers make up about three percent of the labour force and contribute three percent
of the GDP. In Gaza and the West Bank, a third of workers depend upon agriculture,
which accounts for about a third of the GDP. So it is no surprise to find that Israel
buys the entire surplus from farms in the West Bank and Gaza, providing for one-twelfth
of the country’s fresh fruit and vegetable needs. We suggest that they both use this
trend to their advantage and that of their neighbour, Jordan.
Over the next 10 to 15 years, all three parties should agree to increase the supply
of irrigation water in Palestine and Jordan. There are several options for finding
the extra water within the Jordan Valley: a redistribution of supplies from the Mountain
Aquifer and the Jordan River. Rain-harvesting, treated wastewater and improved infrastructure
(40 percent of water is lost to leaky pipes in some Palestinian municipalities).
New sources further afield might also open up. For example, Lebanon might sell water
from the Litani River which could be stored in Lake Tiberias. The new Unity Dam,
under construction by Jordan and Syria, also holds potential.
Desalination:
the saviour?
No
one loses in this proposal. Palestinians and Jordanians see a steady increase in
the number of agricultural jobs at a time of staggering unemployment. They also gain
a guaranteed market for crops and by cultivating more land, Palestinian farmers lay
the seeds for new settlements. We are not suggesting that Palestine base its economy
on agriculture in the long-term. No country in the Middle East can afford to do so
financially or environmentally. But after decades of occupation, Palestinians cannot
be expected to leap-frog economically.
Despite Israel’s cultural attachment “to making the desert bloom,” the state will
have to cut back on farming. By allocating more water to Palestinians and Jordan,
it would not only gain a secure source of cheap fresh food, but the country’s hi-tech
industry would grow by selling irrigation technologies as well as high-profit seeds,
fertilizers and pesticides.
Finally, the international community could “reward” such a regional plan by setting
up an international fund for research and development in water desalination. For
this is clearly our most likely option in the very near future.
In the next 20 to 30 years, the Israeli and Palestinian populations are expected
to double as their respective diasporas immigrate to the region, especially with
formal recognition of a Palestinian state. Every drop of fresh water will be required
to fulfill domestic needs. Desalination will be the saviour. Today the process costs
about $0.65/m3, which is still far too expensive, especially for agriculture. (In
the Middle East, a cubic metre used for irrigation brings an economic return of just
$0.50 to $1.00). Yet it is still cheaper than importing from the region’s hydrological
baron, Turkey, which has proposed constructing a “peace pipeline” to deliver and
sell its blue gold at $0.95/m3.
This proposal may appear to be a naïve attempt to deny the escalating violence.
Yet from where we stand, it would be absurd and even criminal to give up on our work.
In the very near future, technicians from both sides and beyond will be meeting outside
the region to continue to informally discuss and refine this proposal. Contrary to
popular belief, water in the Middle East is not a source of war, but ingenuity. |
The dehydrated
West Bank
Based
upon a new report by B’Tselem–the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories–released in July 2001.
In the West Bank, 218 villages–home to about 200,000 people–are not connected to
a single water network. This is why just about every yard in the area has a cistern
where families store the rain water they have collected from the rooftops of their
homes. However, they can usually only live from supplies during the rainy season
between November and March.
In the summer months and sometimes even the winter, most residents have no choice
but to buy water from vendors who own private tankers. Even villages with running
water often rely on this commerce because of the irregular supply during dry months.
The owners of the tankers buy most of the water from Palestinian municipal water
networks and the rest from Israeli settlements and Palestinian-owned private agricultural
wells (which are not subject to any quality control).
This water market is completely unregulated–“market forces” alone set the prices.
While a household connected to a water network will pay the equivalent of about a
dollar per metre3 , a vendor will charge between $3.50 and $9.50 for the same amount.
This financial burden is like a noose around the neck of many families, who have
lost their primary source of income since the intifada.1 According to B’Tselem, some
village residents can no longer purchase water from the tankers. In the summer, the
women and children of these families cross military checkpoints and blocked roads
to fill bottles and jerrycans with water from nearby springs.
The West Bank contains 114 springs, most of which are primarily used for irrigation.
The most bountiful springs lie in the Nablus and Jericho districts (52 springs).
The others are generally quite poor, especially given the current drought.
For example, the Auja spring, north of Jericho, has totally dried up over the last
three years. Despite decreasing rainfall, an Israeli well continues to pump the aquifer
that feeds the spring for the benefit of nearby Israeli settlements. The situation
has devastated Palestinian agriculture in Al Auga, whose farmers used to rely upon
the spring for irrigation water.
In general, the springs are not just poor in terms of quantity but also quality.
The Palestinian Authority does not control the water, despite the high risk of pollution
by sewage from nearby towns and villages as well as from Israeli settlements and
industrial zones. The very source of a spring can be at risk as the pesticides and
fertilizers used by local farmers seep into the ground.
1. According
to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in the first quarter of 2001, the
median income of a household in the Occupied Territories fell by 48 percent, unemployment
increased from 11 percent before the intifada to 38 percent, and the percentage of
families living in poverty increased to 64 percent, compared to 21 percent before
the intifada. |
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