Water Shortage Creates Tension for Israel, Arabs

One of the harshest droughts in 60 years is forcing water cutbacks to Israeli farmers, raising concerns in the Palestinian territories of painful summer shortages and prompting a political dispute between Israel and neighboring Jordan.

Worse yet, the dry season--with its relentless sun and soaring temperatures--is still two months away.

“We have a severe lack of water here in the best of times,” said Gershon Baskin, a water specialist at an independent Israeli-Palestinian research center in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. “But this year, with a real crisis, the situation is more difficult and complex than ever.”

In addition to a rainy season that Israeli officials describe as one of the driest since 1939, when record-keeping throughout the country began, the demand for water in Israel and the Palestinian areas is growing along with a burgeoning population. And, with Israel having issued a formal declaration of drought Thursday, this year’s shortfall is likely to exacerbate existing disparities in water distribution between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Palestinians “already receive much less than we need from Israel,” said Abdel Rahman Tamimi, who heads the Palestinian Hydrology Group, an independent institution in the West Bank city of Ramallah that studies water and environmental issues. “This year will be even worse.”

Few issues are as emotionally or politically sensitive in the parched Middle East as that of water. Flowing through ancient limestone aquifers beneath the disputed lands of the West Bank, water has been central to Israel’s renowned agricultural success and its industrial development. Along with the status of Jerusalem and the fate of refugees, water is among the complex subjects that must be resolved before a permanent peace agreement can be reached.

Israel still controls nearly all water resources in the West Bank, despite troop withdrawals that have ceded authority over part of the land to the Palestinians and a 1995 interim accord in which the Jewish state recognized “Palestinian water rights in the West Bank.” The same agreement required Israel to meet the Palestinians’ “immediate needs” with an annual allocation of 37.4 million cubic yards of water.

Palestinian water experts say that framework, which gives each Palestinian less than a third as much water as the average Israeli, is wholly inadequate. And it makes no adjustments for heat waves or drought.

In 1998, during one of the hottest summers in more than 25 years, Bethlehem, Hebron and many Palestinian villages near both West Bank cities endured days with little or no piped water. Heavy water usage reduced the flow of water; leaks, together with illegal tapping into the pipes, slashed it further.

The Palestinians, including Fadel Kawash, deputy director of the Palestinian Water Authority, accused Israel of making matters worse by diverting some of the water to its own population, particularly several nearby Jewish settlements.

Israel denied the charge, and Water Commissioner Meir Ben-Meir said the government has provided at least 15% more to the Palestinians than required under peace accords.

But the contrasts are often stark on the West Bank, where many Israeli settlements have community swimming pools, flower gardens and broad expanses of green lawn. About 140 Palestinian communities, meanwhile, have no running water at all.

In Ein Arik, a village about two miles west of Ramallah, young girls and a few small boys made their way one recent morning down a series of stone steps to a small spring surrounded by empty plastic bottles and other trash. There, they scrubbed and carefully filled large jugs, pails and bottles and hauled them back up the hills to their homes.

Warde Ahmed Samih, 19, the eldest of 13 siblings, said she visits the spring as often as six or seven times a day, whenever her mother needs water.

“Every day, we come,” she said, preparing to balance a yellow jug on her head for the climb up the hill. “Every time, to cook, to clean, we have to come.”

But she expressed no bitterness at her situation or resentment that others simply turn on a faucet to receive water. “We are used to this,” she said.

But many others believe that one side or the other should have controlling rights to the West Bank’s water. Palestinians contend that they must be able to guarantee their access to the aquifers under the land on which they hope to establish an independent state; Israelis claim that they are entitled to continue using the majority of the water, as they have since capturing the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Moreover, Israeli officials--notably Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon--argue that control of the West Bank aquifers is crucial to Israel’s national security, pointing out that about 30% of the water supply for the nation’s population of about 6 million comes from the West Bank.

Now, with the chances of significant rainfall this spring dwindling with each day, water levels are dangerously low in the West Bank aquifers and Israel’s other main source, the Sea of Galilee. The sea--actually a freshwater lake fed by the Jordan River--is approaching what Israeli officials consider a red line, about 700 feet below sea level, at which point further pumping is forbidden.

Israel already has announced a 40% reduction in water allotments to Israeli farmers and is likely to enforce the same limits on Palestinian agriculture, according to several of those interviewed.

“For the Palestinians, agricultural production is much more crucial and fundamental, with roughly a quarter of the work force involved, than it is for Israel,” said Baskin of the Israel-Palestinian Center for Research and Information. “In Israel, it’s a matter of economics; it means we buy tomatoes from Belgium instead of growing them here. But the Palestinians can’t afford to import food or divert the work force.”

While not offering an immediate solution to the shortfall, the United States is trying to alleviate the Palestinian water problem. Under a five-year program launched in 1996, the U.S. Agency for International Development is spending $250 million on water projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including four new wells in the Bethlehem and Hebron region.

The wells, two of which are expected to be completed before the end of the year, will help ease the problem. But Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. experts say more water will be needed in the future, probably through costly desalination projects.

A recent study by scientists from the United States, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority warned governments in the region to work together to protect their shared water resources.

Water supplies in the Middle East “now are barely sufficient to maintain a quality standard of living,” said Gilbert White, the chairman of the scientific group and a professor of geography at the University of Colorado.

The drought, meanwhile, is also provoking tensions with Jordan, Israel’s friendliest Arab ally. Although officials of both nations say they expect an amicable resolution soon, Israel angered Jordan last month by seeking to reduce the amount of water it gives the desert kingdom as part of a 1997 agreement and a 1994 peace treaty.

Under the two accords, Israel agreed to provide Jordan with 72 million cubic yards of water a year, much of which is used for drinking in the capital, Amman. But faced with water shortages at home, Israeli officials told their Jordanian counterparts that they needed to cut the 1999 allocation in half.

But Jordan, which declared its own drought in January, strenuously objected.

“We are suffering from the drought also, and we have more limited resources than Israel,” Kamel Mahadeen, Jordan’s water and irrigation minister, said in a telephone interview from Amman. “This is the most important time for us to capitalize on our rights under the peace agreement. The Israelis should understand this.”

At Kfar Menachem, a collective farm about 22 miles west of Jerusalem, Mahadeen might be surprised to discover that at least some Israelis agree.

Surveying the yellowing fields of stunted wheat and scorched clover, farm manager Yehuda Karon lamented the drought-related losses to the kibbutz where he has lived for all of his 55 years.

“It’s a disaster,” Karon said as he pulled a brown sprig of wheat from the dry earth. “Everything got wrong this year; we got a little rain too early, then not enough later. Now the wheat is gone. The sunflowers are gone. Sweet corn, gone. Tomatoes, gone.”

But the farmer replied without hesitation when asked what the government should do in the continuing water discussions with Jordan. “An agreement is an agreement,” Karon said. “It’s not for one year, this agreement; it’s for life. We should give the water even if we don’t have enough in Israel.”

The farmers will be paid compensation by the government that will cover most of their costs, and they will get by, although not unscathed, Karon said. “We will survive,” he said. “But Jordan needs the water. And we need peace.”