“Water is almost as difficult an issue as the refugees,” says NGO

Israel has denied accusations it is siphoning off more than its fair share of water from the Jordan River basin.

Under the terms of the 1967 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, the two countries agreed to share the waters of the Jordan River as well as the Yarmouk, a tributary river. However, ordinary Jordanians have complained that Israel has been consuming more water from the Jordan River than the kingdom.

Uri Schor, spokesman for the Israeli water commissioner, said Israel had heard no official criticism from Jordan. “The agreements suit both sides pretty well. There are no complaints,” he said.

Schor said the average Israeli citizen consumes between 120 litres and 200 litres of water per day. Nongovernmental organisation Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) put the figure at 300 litres, an amount that includes municipal water use, such as in parks or for street cleaning.

Mira Edelstein, who heads FOEME’s campaign to rehabilitate the Jordan River and is an Israeli, said that regardless of the peace treaty with Jordan, Israel was taking a disproportionate amount.

“We are taking more water than anyone else. It’s more than our share, and it’s something we need to fix. It will have to be part of a final peace treaty with the Palestinians,” Edelstein said. “Israel knows it will have to change its ways when we start talking about peace. Water is almost as difficult an issue as the refugee issue.”

According to FOEME, about 100 million cubic metres of water a year now flow into the Dead Sea from the River Jordan – about 7 percent of the 1.3 billion cubic metres that flowed into the Dead Sea before 1964, when the first stage of Israel’s national water carrier project was completed. The carrier connects the Sea of Galilee with Israel’s water system. The original goal of building the carrier was to irrigate the Negev region. Today, 80 percent of the water drawn from the lake is utilised for Israel’s domestic consumption.

Only 10 percent of the water in the River Jordan gets to the Dead Sea. As a result, the sea’s water level is dropping by about a metre a year and it has lost about 30 percent of its surface area.

“South of the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River doesn’t flow anymore. All of the water is diverted for domestic use and agriculture. What goes into it is raw sewage and agricultural runoff from all sides,” Edelstein said.

Gideon Bromberg, director of FOEME’s Tel Aviv office, said it was impossible to calculate how much water Israeli industry takes from the Jordan River, although he said most of the water it takes is used in agriculture.

“Israel has a fully integrated water system, which means that the three main sources – the Sea of Galilee, the mountain aquifer [which runs under most of the West Bank] and the coastal aquifer – are all connected through the national water carrier,” said Bromberg. “But more and more of the country’s drinking water is coming from the groundwater and less from the Sea of Galilee, most of which is going on agriculture.”

Schor told IRIN that Israel recognises the region’s water problem requires international cooperation. “From the Israeli point of view, although we have a continuing intifada, we continue speaking and solving problems. We meet with the Jordanians and the Palestinians on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis,” he said, referring to discussions on the water issue.

“In five to 10 years, this whole area will need water badly. The only solution is to create new sources of water. You can do that by treating sewage - which can be used in agriculture, so freeing up more fresh water - and by desalination,” he said.

Despite these efforts, Israelis and Palestinians remain at loggerheads over important water issues.

“The main water problem for Israel is the Palestinians,” said Schor. “Under the terms of the [1991] Oslo agreement, Israel must provide the Palestinian Authority with 57 cubic metres of water per year for each Palestinian. We actually give them more than that amount.

“Israel is offering the Palestinians desalinated water. Our plant at Ashkelon is the biggest of its kind in the world and produces 100 million cubic metres of water a year,” he said.

Photo: Edward Parsons/IRIN

A sheepherder in Negev, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel, draws water to give to his goats. Palestinians have been struggling over water access for many years, especially in areas where water resources are controlled by Israel

“In Gaza, the groundwater is now too salty to drink because the Palestinians have pumped out too much and the sea has seeped in. We are offering them desalinated water. When you mix the salty groundwater and the desalinated water, you get drinking water,” Schor said. “But they don’t want it. It’s the same in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]. The Palestinians are not willing to take desalinated water from our plant near Hadera.”

Nader Al-Khateeb, director of FOEME in the occupied Palestinian territories and of the Water and Environmental Development Organisation, said the cost of piping the desalinated water from the coastal plant into the West Bank could be too expensive for many Palestinians. "The best thing is to let the Palestinians use the water resources near them," he said.

According to Al-Khateeb, the Palestinians were simply being denied water from sources they have a right to access. “Since 1967, the Palestinians have had no access to the River Jordan because it is a closed military area. All the water resources, including those in the West Bank, are under Israeli control,” he said.

Currently, Palestinians do not take any water from the Jordan River.

“Palestinians should be able to take 250 million cubic metres a year from the Jordan basin. We are unhappy that Israel is diverting water out of the basin and into its national water carrier, despite developments in desalination techniques,” Al-Khateeb said. "Since 1967, Palestinians have not taken a single drop from the Jordan because the area has been declared a closed military zone. Even the irrigation pumps that were there have either been destroyed or abandoned."

Now, Palestinians have access to 20 percent of the water in the mountain aquifer, and the rest of their water is supplied to them by Israel under the terms of the Oslo agreement.

“Israel has more access to desalinated water than the Palestinians because they live more in coastal areas and the Israelis can afford to pay for it,” said Al-Khateeb.

The average Palestinian living in an urban area uses between 50 litres and 70 litres of water a day – less than half the 120 litres to 200 litres per day the Israeli government says its citizens use, Al-Khateeb said. Furthermore, Israel also takes about 80 percent of the groundwater from the mountain aquifer, leaving just 20 percent for the Palestinians.

According to Al-Khateeb, the 1967 bilateral water agreement between Jordan and Israel would have to be renegotiated into a bigger regional water agreement in the future.

“Will the Israeli-Jordanian water agreement be sustainable? The Lebanese are also in the Jordan basin – they are not even part of any agreements. One day it has to be reconsidered. We need a regional solution – a bilateral one cannot solve the problem,” he said. “Soon the Jordanians and the Syrians will complete a dam across the River Yarmouk, one of the Jordan’s main tributaries. The main victim will be the Palestinians.”

Despite the differences between the Israelis and Palestinians over water, Al-Khateeb said there were some encouraging signs. The Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians have signed the terms of reference for a big project that will use the difference in altitude between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea to generate electricity to desalinate water, he said.

“The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project is costly and will not happen in the near future. But having all three sides sign the terms of reference was a major breakthrough,” Al-Khateeb said.

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