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AL HABTOOR INFORMATION AND RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

Virtually every day we read in the newspapers and see on our televisions screens the events taking place in the Palestinian / Israeli conflict. However, the news reports from the region barely mention the importance of water in this clash between Israel and the Palestinian population that is living under Israeli occupation. Nevertheless, water, along with land, is the most important driver of this conflict.

   From the rise of Zionism as a political movement in the 1890’s, in the minds of Zionists water has been as important as the desire for land. Their desire to establish a Jewish state in Palestine hinged on their ability to acquire land and have access to water resources. They envisaged a Jewish state that was based on agricultural self-sufficiency - a settler land where Jewish colonists would exploit existing resources to the detriment of the indigenous Arab population.

   So aware were Zionists of the importance to control the water resources for their proposed state, that after the First World War, they proposed borders to the British for their new state. These borders began at a point on the Mediterranean, north of the mouth of the Litani River, then swept east to include all the sources feeding the Jordan River (including Lebanon’s Hasbani, and Syria’s Benias rivers), the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias and all the Yarmouk River tributaries, further east past Dera’a to Amman, then south to the Gulf of Aqaba, then west to the Nile. As can be seen, the Zionist movement realised that in order to create a viable state, they would have to control as many sources of water as they could, if they were to succeed in their aim of settling millions of Jews in Palestine - their claimed ‘promised land’.

   On the eve of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, when Britain committed itself to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Chem Weitzmann, the leading spokesman for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and later the first President of Israel, wrote to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, describing the minimum requirements for a Jewish state in the land of Palestine. Explaining the Jewish prospective on the issue of Palestinian water, he wrote: “ The whole economic future of Palestine is dependant upon its water supply for irrigation and power, and the water must mainly be derived from the slopes of mount Hermon, from the headwaters of the Jordan, and the Litani river in Lebanon….. We consider it essential that the Northern Frontier for a Jewish state should include the valley of the Litani, for a distance of 25 miles above the bend and the Western slopes of Mount Hermon .” As this letter clearly shows, such ambitions completely neglected Arab historic rights.

   During the British Mandate, right up until the establishment of Israel in 1948, the British occupying authorities supported Jewish ambitions and provided secure natural resources for its projected development. To enable it to do this, it ignored the presence of Arabs in Palestine and their needs and wishes. Decisions were based on water rights, and solely the British in Palestine , and the French in Lebanon took the drawing up of plans for water use. Palestinians, in particular, were not consulted.

   For example, Arabs made up the overwhelming majority of the population in 1926, (749,402 against 149,500 Jewish settlers, or just 16.6% of the population). The Jews were granted, by the British, the following: a 70 year concession to utilise the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers ’ water, a seventy year concession to utilise the Dead Sea to produce salts and minerals, and they were also permitted to utilise the Yarkon (Al Oja) river in the Jaffa area. It is therefore obvious that the Zionists desired to grab land and control its natural resources, and thus claim for themselves the land of Palestine , including significant parts of Jordan , Lebanon and Syria , to create their Jewish homeland.

   Nothing has changed. Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has continued to grab land and resources. All its wars with its neighbours have really had only one aim; to obtain control of the region’s water resources. The Israeli drive for more water stems from the Zionist ideology of “making the desert bloom”, which in turn is tied to the “ right to return” law that allows all Jews the right of permanent residence in Israel . The passing of this law has seen waves of Jewish immigrants, encouraged by successive Israeli governments, settle in Palestine . These waves of immigrants have placed huge demands on the water resources available to Israel . In an effort to meet this demand Israel has engaged in a series of wars with its neighbours, to try to solve the problem.

   Israel is the only country in the region to have actually used force in securing water supplies.

   At the beginning of the 1960’s, Israeli soldiers stopped a Syrian/Jordanian scheme to divert the River Jordan. And since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, Israel has vastly expanded its control over water resources, including Mount Hebron, the West Bank aquifers and the entire length of the Jordan River. Its 1982 invasion of South Lebanon extended Israel’s command even further to include part of the Litani River. It is clearly an Israeli strategy to control and benefit from all water resources in the occupied territories.

   Take a look at any map depicting the water resources of the Eastern Mediterranean and it is evident that Israel is still pursuing the Zionist’s policy of expansion and expulsion, to achieve their goal of a ‘greater Israel’. Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and on the Golan Heights have all been purposely built over the major water aquifers there, to allow it to control water supplies to Palestinian towns and villages. Israel is deliberately depriving the Palestinians of their water, and instead, diverting it to its settlements and to Israel itself. The Israelis hope that along with land theft and military repression, they will ultimately drive the Palestinian people from their homeland.

   Today Israel controls all the water resources between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, including the aquifers under the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. This means that Israel can control all the water received by the Palestinians and Arabs in these areas. They can determine the quantities consumed and distribute water according to nationality and location.

   We have only to look at the numbers to see just how this works. Every day, the average Israeli consumes five times as much water as a Palestinian, while settlers in the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan receive seven times more. Or to state it more clearly, on average, each Israeli gets 92.5 gallons a day, while a Palestinian receives only 18.5 gallons per day. The current supply of water to Palestinians amounts to only 25% of their daily need. And it is estimated that Israeli consumption is growing at around 50 million cubic metres each year – fuelled by continuous immigration, increased industrial demand and wasteful agricultural use. This figure fails to take into account the rapid growth in the Palestinian population that will place even greater demands on the regions scarce water resources. The minimum quantity of water recommended by the World Health Organisation for household and urban use is 26.4 gallons per person per day.

    To give some idea of Israel’s thirst for water, compare its per capita daily use, which amounts to 92.5 gallons a day and compare to its regional neighbours - in Syria, the average water use is 50 gallons per day, in Lebanon it is 41 gallons a day and in Jordan, the average citizen uses 25 gallons per day.

   Israel uses 88% of Palestine’s renewable water resource. It is reserved by force for the use of only six million Israelis, while the remaining 12% supplies three million Palestinians. In other words, four Palestinians are forced to survive on the same amount of water consumed by a single Israeli.

   Israel’s water use is blatant - traffic islands in the settlements are green, filled with flowers. The settlers have green lawns, palm trees and swimming pools; they have showers and constant running tap water. Palestinians on the other hand have water for a limited number of hours a day, polluted by agricultural nitrate runoff, no gardens, and certainly no swimming pools.

    Additionally, there is an estimated 215,000 Palestinians living in 150 villages in the occupied territories that are not connected to a running water supply, who experience chronic water shortages for up to six months of the year. What is more, Palestinians, even if they wished to try and increase their water supply, are forbidden to do so by the occupying power. They are not allowed to drill wells or deepen existing ones without the local military commanders’ permission. Needless to say, approvals are indeed rare.

   The imbalances are striking. In the West Bank some Palestinians walk long distances for their water, passing young settlers playing happily in the swimming pools of the Jewish settlements in their midst. In Gaza, ample water is piped from Israel for the few thousand Jewish settlers there; this, while a million Palestinians each day pump the polluted dregs of the Mediterranean aquifer, that runs under Gaza and is polluted and overexploited by the Israelis.

   So desperately greedy is the state of Israel for water, that it also takes over 100 million cubic metres of water from the Yarmouk River and diverts the Jordan River above lake Tiberias, leaving only a polluted trickle downstream of the lake. And it is believed by many, that Israel has created a secret underground pipeline to divert water from the Litani River, which originates in the Bak’aa Valley and flows within the Lebanese territory, to Israel.

   Israel’s constant thirst in the main is self-inflicted. If it were to abandon the Zionist ideology of an agriculturally self-sufficient Jewish homeland able to feed itself, it would solve its need for the ever-increasing amounts of water. At the same time, it would allow the Palestinian people enough water for their daily living needs, and supply them with enough for economic growth. Israel’s adherence to Zionist doctrine has meant that it has invested much of its water resources in the development of farming in Palestine. However, farming is down to two per cent of Israel’s gross national product and imports over 80 % of what it eats; the only reason it survives at all, is that farmers pay much less than other consumers for their water, even though they are using over 60% of all the drinkable water supply.

   The extravagant and wasteful use of the regions water resources by Israel means that Palestine is running out of water. Despite this, Israeli home consumption is still 92.5 gallons per day and no Israeli is as present willing to recognise that the blame can be placed on his doorstep. The arrogance that it has developed over the decades since its birth, and its belief that it can solve all its problems by the use of force, means it will never, under the Zionists, be prepared to sit at a negotiating table and discuss peace. For in terms of water resource allocation, it would have to pay heavy price. Under the arch Zionist Sharon, peace with the Palestinians is out of the question. It would defeat the avowed aim of an entirely Jewish homeland in Palestine, with no other citizens save the Jews themselves. They do not want to share the land with anyone and wish to dispossess and expel all Arabs from Palestine.

   Thus, Israel’s water policy is to seek new water resources, and retain permanent control of those it already has, through conquest and occupation. Make no mistake; Israel will use force if it can obtain more water in no other way. It has been pointed out that given the rapid annual growth in Israel’s water consumption, nothing short of harnessing a proportion of the other major river systems of the Middle East - the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris - can meet the long-term requirements of Israel’s water need.

   Some observers say that this is exactly Israel’s intention. It has in the past developed a relationship with Ethiopia ostensibly to trade Israeli arms for Ethiopian Jewish immigrants. But according to other sources, the real reason behind this involvement was to establish a foothold in its decades old push for access to the Nile. It supplied Ethiopia in the late 1980’s with water experts, engineers and technology that would have allowed the Ethiopians to dam the Blue Nile, a major tributary to the Nile. It was remoured that Israel was prepared to pay for the construction of up to 26 dams on the Blue Nile.

   While it is doubtful that Israel could have diverted a substantial amount of water, it could use control of the headwaters of the Nile as a political weapon in the region. Prospects like these make Egypt uneasy, as it depends for all its water needs on the Nile, and any reduction would have dire economic consequences on a country whose population is growing by one million a year.

   Now with the prospect of an invasion of Iraq by America, Israel’s major ally, there is a possibility that if the Americans are successful in overthrowing the Iraqi regime, Israel may at last get some access to the Tigris and the Euphrates, both of which flow through Iraq.

   On other fronts, Israel is launching a serious effort to supplement dwindling water reserves with desalinated seawater. However, the first plant will not be in operation until later this year, and will hardly make a dent in the countries water shortage. In fact, both the plants outputs will be needed to cover the increase in water consumption during the time it has taken to build them. It has also recently signed an agreement with Turkey that will see Turkey supply an estimated 50 million cubic metres of water to Israel, in exchanged for Israeli military hardware. But with Israeli water demand increasing at 30 million cubic meters a year, both projects will not meet Israel’s long-term needs.

   A recent study of the water crisis in Palestine stated that the amount of water taken illegally by Israel from the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Lebanese, reckoned at a cost of five US Dollars (the cost of producing one cubic metre of desalinated water in the Arabian Gulf) would be 4.4 billion dollars annually. This is equal to the entire amount all Arab Gulf States desalinate annually.

   But even theft on this grand scale will not solve the water crisis for Israel, nor will it provide fairness and justice for the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

   Since September 2000, when the current uprising against the occupation began, the water crisis for the Palestinian people has become even more desperate, particularly for those not directly connected to the water network. The Zionist policy of closure, whereby Palestinian towns and villages are cut off, curfews enforced, and whole areas quarantined, makes it difficult and dangerous for people to go to nearby wells, or for water tankers to go into villages.

   Water shortages violate the basic human rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories, such as the right to health, and adequate housing, the right to equality and the inherent right to benefit from their natural resources. All these rights are violated by the Israeli policies that have been in force since the 1967 war, and are based on an unfair division of natural resources.

   When viewing the crisis in Palestine we must always remember that Israel is founded on one central tenet - that any Jew, anywhere in the world, can migrate and settle there. Six million Jews currently live in Israel and the occupied territories, but there are an estimated 12 to 14 million Jews worldwide. If immigration continues at this pace, then future Israeli governments will have to find more land and more water. While they continue to pursue the Zionist expansionist dream of a “Greater Israel,” maintains the fourth most powerful army in the world, and have for an ally the world’s only super power, no country, or its resources are safe from their grasping hands.