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Drought of Biblical Scale Worsens
By MORT ROSENBLUM
AP Special Correspondent
TIBERIAS, Israel (AP) — The Sea of Galilee, the biblical lake where Jesus
walked on water, has been pumped almost to its limit. It is now so low that
salt deposits endanger its sweet water. Broad mud flats and odd little
islands deface the placid expanse of blue that until just a few years ago
lapped at old stone walls. Israel's other main sources, aquifers marbled
within mountains and along the Mediterranean coast, are depleted by the worst
drought in a century. They are being tapped much faster than engineers
advise.
With all of their other problems, Israelis and Palestinians are running out
of water. ``We're worried, very worried,'' said Zvi Stuhl, senior engineer at
Mekorot, Israel's water company. He oversees the National Water Carrier,
which has supplied homes and made deserts bloom for 37 years. Against a
backdrop of fresh conflict, water politics are paramount. Arabs receive a
fraction of what goes to Jews, which adds hard immediacy to the slow process
of making peace. Israelis say their advanced society, with its developed
economy, needs more water. Palestinians argue that the water shortage blocks
their development.
The imbalances are striking. In the West Bank, some Palestinians trudge long
distances for water, at times within earshot of youths frolicking in the
swimming pools of Jewish settlements built in their midst. In the Gaza Strip,
a few thousand Jewish settlers have ample water piped from Israel while a
million Palestinians pump the last drinkable dregs of underground rivers
polluted by encroaching seawater and sewage. ``You cannot talk about peace
while you have this discrimination on the ground,'' said Ayman Rabi,
executive director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group. ``Every day, the
problem is getting worse.''
Because the Palestinian economy depends so heavily on growing food, the
future looks bleak, he said. Water authorities say the present is serious
enough. Uri Saguy, chairman of Mekorot, went on the air in June to warn of
more drought to come, with the country already facing a 30 percent water
shortfall. One stopgap measure is to bring tankers of water from Turkey, but
that won't begin for a year, warned Sara Haklai, who manages supply for
Mekorot.
Salvation may ultimately lie in desalting seawater, as Arab states on the
Persian Gulf already do. But although Israel is a world leader in the
technology, it prefers natural water sources for itself. Desalination plants
are now being planned, but the first two, not expected to operate before
2004, will meet only 5 percent of the normal annual demand. Meanwhile, the
population mushrooms. A high Arab birth rate and influxes of Jewish
immigrants have boosted it to more than 6 million Israelis and 3.3 million
Palestinians. ``We have to reduce the supply, but everyone wants to do
something different,'' Haklai said. ``The government has to decide what to do
and be sure that everybody does it.''
The crisis has deep roots. In 1990, Israel's state comptroller excoriated
``irresponsible management of the water supply for 25 years'' that destroyed
reserves and damaged water quality. In a report last year for the Institute
for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, analyst Steven Plaut concluded:
``Israeli water policy is and has been a nearly unmitigated disaster,
producing waste, misallocation, and environmental destruction.'' The National
Water Carrier is an engineering showpiece. The intricate grid of pipeline and
canal, is fed by three huge pumps on the Galilee, or Lake Kinneret, set
underground in case of war with neighboring Syria. It conveys water far south
to the Negev desert. Normally, the lake supplies more than 100 billion
gallons a year, but pumping is down by more than three-quarters, and is being
pushed ever closer to the point where saltwater springs might seep in. If the
lake's surface drops another three feet, Stuhl said, pumps will draw air and
stop dead, Stuhl said. The carrier network also taps the coastal aquifer,
which lies largely beneath Israel, and the mountain aquifer, which is mostly
under Palestinian territory. Both are also at their danger points. Uri
Shamir, head of the Water Research Institute at Technion University in Haifa
and an Israeli water negotiator, told a meeting of experts in Paris that
severe shortages forced both sides into a test of good will. ``If you seek a
conflict, water can provide a plausible excuse,'' he said. ``If you seek
peace, water is a bridge for cooperation.'' In the West Bank and Gaza,
Palestinian specialists argue that Israelis can afford to seize the moral
high ground because they control the water. Mekorot says that on a per-person
basis, Jews get just over twice as much water as Arabs. The numbers are in
sharp dispute, however, partly because of how they are calculated and partly
because some water data is secret. According to B'Tselem, the respected
Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,
Israelis get five times as much water as Palestinians on a per-person
average. In Gaza, the water ratio is 7-1, it said. In practice, a B'Tselem
report notes, Israel is in command because operating arrangements with the
Palestinians give it veto power over new water projects in Arab territories.
During shortages, the report says, Israelis often cut supplies to
Palestinians to satisfy their own demand. Palestinian water systems are
inadequate and badly degraded in places. According to B'Tselem, at least
215,000 West Bank Arabs with no piped supply have to survive on costly
bottled water when nearby springs go dry. Marwan Haddad at An-Najah
University in Nablus estimates that Israeli households actually get 10 times
more water. By cutting back consumption only 10 percent, he says, Israel
could double the supply to the Palestinians. He believes the Israelis see
nothing wrong with the imbalance. ``They think it is their land, their water,
and we are intruders,'' he said. This should be a technical matter not a
political one. But they don't accept us as people.'' Eran Feitelson, an
Israeli expert at Jerusalem's Hebrew University who works with Haddad on
hydrology studies, agrees that equal access to water is a basic human right.
The conflict, he said, is more about symbolism than science because both
sides view farming as essential to their identity, and farming consumes too
much water. Working the land and making deserts bloom is the basis of the
whole Zionist enterprise of returning Jews to their homeland. To
Palestinians, the family farm passed down through generations is a validation
of their nationhood. ``Technically, this all can be solved, but the problem
is perception,'' Feitelson said. ``There's a big difference between what
professionals know and the public perceives. And politicians can play on
this.'' Farming is already down to a token 2 percent of Israel's gross
national product, far behind high technology. Israel imports 80 percent of
what it eats. Mainly, it sells export crops, such as citrus and flowers.
Israel's agriculture survives because farmers pay much less than household
consumers and industries for water even though farmers use 60 percent of the
drinkable supply. Palestinians depend more directly on farming. Their economy
is about one-third agricultural. Despite the crisis, Israel's home
consumption remains near 80 gallons daily per person. In wealthy Tel Aviv
neighborhoods, people use up to three times the national average, about equal
to Phoenix, Ariz. ``Even now, most Israelis have no sense of a crisis,'' said
Raphael Semiot at the Technion water center. ``It's hard to believe but many
just go on as if nothing is different.'' In Efrat, a West Bank Jewish
settlement, pizzeria owner Mordechai Goodman was puzzled when asked about
water supply. ``We just turn on the tap,'' he said, with a shrug. In the
neighboring Palestinian city of Hebron, where homes might get a few hours of
running water a month, people rig makeshift tanks in basements. Cherished
vegetable plots have withered away. Franklin Fisher, an economics professor
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose speciality is Middle East
water, scoffs at the idea of war over water. Stripped of emotion or
symbolism, he said, fresh water cannot be worth more than it costs to
produce. In the Holy Land, the entire water supply should be valued only
somewhere in the low millions of dollars, he said. Seawater can be
desalinated for less than Israeli households now pay for water, he said on a
visit to Jerusalem. Gaza could be supplied via the National Water Carrier and
inefficient farming could be replaced with imported food. But Fisher
punctuated his remarks by saying, ``In a perfect world ...,'' with a chuckle
to acknowledge how far from perfect Middle East affairs are. Mutual distrust
hampers technical practicalities. Palestinian leaders dismiss out of hand
arrangements that leave Israel's hand on their faucet. ``On paper it might
work, but it's not so simple,'' Semiot said. ``In the West Bank, if they
don't get water, they don't care about cost. They know that without water,
they don't have food, and they are ready to fight.'' Specialists on both
sides agree that in the long run politics cannot override nature. Hillel
Shuval, a Hebrew University expert, insists agriculture should compete for
scarce water on real terms. ``We are already causing irreparable damage to
our aquifers,'' he said. ``It is suicidal to grow food in water-short
areas.'' To make his point, he plans to sue if the state adopts a proposed
three-year ban on watering home gardens while farmers grow flowers for Europe
with subsidized water. Shuval also insists that only fair distribution can
ease conflict. ``If we're going to live in peace with Palestinians,'' he
concluded, ``it is in Israel's political, social and economic interest to get
them enough water not only to survive but also to thrive.''
Drought of Biblical Scale Worsens
Large Dams Create Millions of Refugees
Wealth Dictates Where Water Flows
Water Crisis Looms for Much of World
Holy Water
Graphic: Dams of the World
Graphic: Map of Colorado River
ON THE WEBWater Resources Center at University of California-Berkeley
U.S. Geological Survey
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
"We're not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be Useful."
Leonard Peltier
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