New plan calls for an investment of Euro 10.47 billion in the coming decade to develop water production and supply systems to deal with the dwindling precipitation and the rise in the salinity of the groundwater which considerably exceeds previous estimates, according to a master plan for water now being finalized.
The master plan, drafted by a Water Authority task force with the help of environmental organizations, was submitted this week to the National Planning and Building Council.
About 80 percent of this development will be financed by water prices; the state will provide the rest. But the rise in water prices will not need to be significant, as the number of consumers will rise, due to population increases.
Israel’s water consumption per capita has declined sharply, from more than 110 cubic meters annually in the past to 90 cubic meters today, mainly due to water-saving campaigns and the rise in water prices, the task force said.
Environmental organizations object to this conclusion, saying that water saving must be consistently encouraged. This could obviate the need for some desalination facilities, which, in addition to high costs, have negative environmental effects, such as energy consumption and occupying large areas of the coastal region.
But in any case, the master plan’s implementation faces significant stumbling blocks. One of these is the absence of a government body in charge of policy on issues like population growth and dispersal. The Water Authority also lacks the clout to ensure that enough desalination plants are built, and it is severely short of professional personnel.
The Middle East is likely to plunge into a serious humanitarian crisis due to depletion of water resources, unless remedial measures are introduced urgently, says a new report [1]. The Strategic Foresight Group prepared the report, “The Blue Peace”, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and input from almost 100 leaders and experts from Israel, the Palestine Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
The report assesses the principal challenges linked to the trans-border management of resources. At present a factor of division and tension, water harbours the potential of becoming an instrument of peace and cooperation. This emerges as the report’s central thesis. Subsequently, it compiles a list of ten recommendations, calculated in the short, medium, and long terms, which are aimed to lead to pragmatic solutions.
For the first time ever, the Human Rights Committee has addressed denial of access to water and sanitation as violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), says the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE).
The UN Human Rights Committee found Israel in violation of its commitments under international law. The violations identified by the Committee include forced evictions of Palestinians from their homes, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and denying Palestinians access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The UN Human Rights Committee issued its findings against Israel at the conclusion of its 99th session, held in Geneva from 12-30 July 2010.
The Israel Defense Force’s Civil Administration destroyed a Palestinian village Monday morning that had earlier been cleared out when its water supply was cut off. The IDF demolished about 55 structures in the West Bank village of Farasiya, including tents, tin shacks, plastic and straw huts, clay ovens, sheep pens and bathrooms.
These structures served the 120 farmers, hired workers and their families who lived in the Jordan Valley village. The Civil Administration said they had declared the area a live fire zone and posted eviction orders for 10 families in tents on June 27. “Since no appeal was filed in the following three weeks, and given the danger posed by the location of the tents, they were removed,” they said in response.
Since 1967, Israel has prevented Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley from growing, whether by cutting off their water supply, declaring large areas as live fire zones or banning all construction.
The families had recently been forced to leave the village when the Israeli authorities cut it off from its water sources, said the popular committees’ coordinator in the valley, Fathi Hadirat.
The villagers were forbidden to use the water wells the Mekorot Water Company had dug in the area.
The Auja Spring in the Jordan Valley used to be one of the largest springs in Palestine, providing water to the Auja community and its thousands of sheep, and irrigating 130,000 dunams of land. Currently, the construction of a series of deep Israeli wells in the Auja Valley has led to the almost total drying out of the source, forcing local farmers to abandon agriculture and take day jobs in nearby settlements.From the Source visited the village of Auja and spoke to its mayor Sulaiman Romaniin about water, settlements and the future of Auja. “We need a solution, a sustainable source of water,” Romaniin said. “We want our water rights. Even if we can’t get all of our rights, we would like at least half of them.” For the whole interview click here
Talks aimed at adopting a water management strategy for the Mediterranean failed due to a row between Israel and Arab countries over a reference to the Palestinian territories, participants said.
“Unfortunately we can not reach an agreement,” French secretary of state for European affairs Pierre Lellouche said at the end of the 4th Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Water in Barcelona where the body is based.
The conference aimed to reach an agreement on a strategy for managing fresh water in the Mediterranean to ensure equal access to the non-renewable resource and prevent the issue from becoming a source of conflict in the future.
But a reference to “occupied territories” in a proposed draft text prevented the approval of a final accord event though delegates were in agreement on 99 percent of the technical issues related to water management”, said Lellouche.
The head of the body, Jordan’s Ahmad Masa’deh, said he was saddened by the failure to reach an agreement at the conference because it “casts doubt on the future of the Mediterranean Union.”
The union groups all 27 EU member states with countries in North Africa, the Balkans, the Arab world as well as Israel in a bid to foster cooperation in the region.
“My disappointment is matched only by my hope, this structure is irreversible,” said Lellouche, adding the body is a “fundamental project for peace in this region and it has not lost any validity”.
Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau rejected responsibility for the failure of the talks and blamed Arab nations instead.
“We wanted to concentrate solely on the problems of water and avoid entering into political themes. But Arab League nations lapsed into pure propaganda and made political declarations against the state of Israel,” he said.
The issue of access to water is of crucial importance for the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin.
Over 180 million people in the region already lack water and over 60 million people face chronic shortages, according to Mediterranean Union experts.
International organizations say Israel’s water supplies fall short of Palestinian needs, but also that the Palestinians have failed to set up the infrastructure and institutions needed in the water sector.
Source: Daily news Egypt, 14 April , 2010
A short but worrying news article in the Jerusalem Post prompts me to post something on the groundwater contamination situation in the Occupied Westbank. The JP stated that “National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau said Wednesday that Israel should consider ceasing water flow to the Palestinians if they do not stop contaminating the water with sewage”.
In this valley, the towering Israel settlement of Ariel dominates the valley. In the middle lies the Palestinian town of Salfit and below is the domain of some Bedouin families and farmers. These families live literally next to open sewage. Untreated waste water from both the Israeli settlements and Salfit contaminate the valley of Salfit. One man told us how he has to cope with expensive water tankers for supply, living next to a black river created by sewage from both Salfit and Ariel.
Israel completely control the water supply and sewage management in this area. Photographer Skip Schiel has written about the area back in 2007. A proposal to build a sewage treatment plant funded by the Germans has been blocked by Israelis time and again. The result ? No treatment of any sewage water entering the valley. As quoted by Skip, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, 80 factories from Ariel’s Burkan industrial zone discharge 0.81 million cubic meters of wastewater per year into nearby valleys. Israel has long prevented the building of proper sewage treatment plants in the Occupied Territories. For Landau now to accuse the Palestinians of contaminating the groundwater whilst Israel prevents and even destroys the building of sewage treatment plants in the oPt consistently, not seeing his own responsibility to the environment but threatening with ceasing water supply to Palestinians instead is simply cruel, uncompassionate and inhumane.
Source: Israel is threatening to shut down water supply to the Palestinians, From the Source Blog, 13 April 2010
In a new report [1], Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies. Israeli authorities said the report “distorts the truth” and that it reflected Palestinian propaganda.
These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.
“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.
In their new report [1], Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water. Uzi Landau, Israel’s minister of national infrastructure, called the report “a lie” and said it reflected Palestinian propaganda. “Despite Israel’s severe water crisis, Israel transfers large quantities of water, greater than it is obliged to according to the [Oslo] agreement.”
Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 per cent.
The Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.
While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day, four times as much.
In some rural communities Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.
Some 180,000-200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater.
In contrast, Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools.
[...] In the Gaza Strip, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.
[...] To cope with water shortages and lack of network supplies many Palestinians have to purchase water, of often dubious quality, from mobile water tankers at a much higher price.
[...] Israel has appropriated large areas of the water-rich Palestinian land it occupies and barred Palestinians from accessing them. It has also imposed a complex system of permits which the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT. Applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.
Vegetable crops and irrigation network being uprooted by an Israeli army bulldozer in Jiftlik, Jordan Valley, 11 March 2008. Photo: Amnesty International
[...] In rural areas, Palestinian villagers are continuously struggling to find enough water for their basic needs, as the Israeli army often destroys their rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates their water tankers.
[...] In some Palestinian villages, because their access to water has been so severely restricted, farmers are unable to cultivate the land, or even to grow small amounts of food for their personal consumption or for animal fodder, and have thus been forced to reduce the size of their herds.
“Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources,” said Donatella Rovera.
In a separate feature “The day the bulldozers came…“ read how Israeli army bulldozers destroyed rainwater cisterns, that were built in 2006 as part of a European Union-funded project, in the village of Beit Ula, north-west of Hebron.
Israeli reaction to Amnesty Report
The Israel Water authority said the report “distorts the truth” and that Israel “holds up its end of the Oslo agreement regarding water sharing”.
Uzi Landau, Israel’s minister of national infrastructure, called the report “a lie” and said it reflected Palestinian propaganda. “Despite Israel’s severe water crisis, Israel transfers large quantities of water, greater than it is obliged to according to the [Oslo] agreement.”
A different perspective: a Palestinian and Israeli mayor are building a water bridge
Canadian-Israeli enviro journalist Karin Kloosterman has a more positive story to tell. One where the Mayor of Gaza is co-operating with one from a nearby Israeli city, so Gaza City can build its own water treatment facility. An international meeting in Brazil in July 2009 was lined up so the two could meet, Hams refused to let the Mayor of Gaza from leaving the Strip.
Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem did attend the event, however, and they signed their names on the water works plan, without the consent of Hamas officials.
Expected to cost more than $50 million, the plant will be modelled on the eight-year old water treatment facility in Ashkelon. Gaza will receive the blueprints and Israeli specialists.
After World Bank issues report, commissioned by the Palestinian Authority on the condition of water accessibility in the West Bank, Israel claims the reports authors are biased. To understand the conditions on the ground, how they’ve been addressed, and whether the so-called peace process succeeded in addressing them, The Real News speaks to LifeSource Project, a non-profit organization focusing solely on the issue of water. Susan Koppelman and Taysir Arabasi tell The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky the Mountain Aquifer, the biggest supply of fresh underground water is pumped by Israel even though it lies almost entirely in the West Bank. They also speak about restrictions on Palestinians to dig water wells, and their dependence on the Israeli national water corporation, Mekorot.
EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) calls on the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to replace the failed Joint Water Committee (JWC) with a new joint water management structure. FoEME calls on the Quartet led by the new Administration of US President Barak Obama to focus on the dire Palestinian water economy as a matter of urgency and help the parties replace the JWC with a new institution that empowers both sides as equal partners.
“It is time to replace the failed mechanism of the Joint Water Committee, established under Oslo, with an institution where Palestinians and Israelis are true partners in both water supply and management responsibilities,” said Nader Khateeb, Palestinian Director of Friends of the Earth Middle East.
As earlier reports of FoEME detailed and the latest World Bank report highlighted, the Joint Water Committee has failed the interests of both peoples, not providing the water quantities needed to Palestinians and not protecting shared Israeli/Palestinian water resources from large scale pollution.
“The irony is that due to the water crises, following 5 consecutive years of [drought], pollution largely from Palestinian sources poses an ever increasing threat to the declining shared water reserves,” said Gidon Bromberg, Israeli Director of Friends of the Earth Middle East. “A key problem with the JWC is that it has disempowered the Palestinians from being able to take responsibility for water management. The Palestinians receive so little of the shared water, that Israelis must ask themselves, what incentive do Palestinians have to protect shared water from pollution?” he added.
In 2008, FoEME released a Model Water Agreement that called for the replacement of the Joint Water Committee with a new body where equivalent powers and responsibilities would lie with both sides covering all shared water resources.
As the World Bank report highlights the present structure of the JWC gives virtual veto power just to the Israeli side on all shared water issues.
“After 15 years of JWC failure, the results have proven to be catastrophic. It’s urgent to free the water sector and water needs of both peoples from the conflict”, continued Nader Khateeb, FoEME Palestinian Director.
Mrs Sondes Kamoun has been appointed as Director General of the Tunisian Office of Planning and Hydraulic Balance. She succeed to Fethi Lebdi. Mrs Kamoun has been for several years the coordinator of EMWIS National Focal Point for Tunisia.
In the framework of the GIZ AGIRE programme, a wokshop held on 9 and 10 May brought together 35 representatives from Morocan water basin agencies, Ministry water department, consultancy companies and EMWIS. After extensive sessions dedicated to sharing of knowledge on past and ongoing developments, the participants outlined an action plan to support informat […]
