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Mideast
Tapping Into The Water Issue
A Jaffee Center study says Israel should hold onto water resources
in the West Bank and Gaza.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
erusalem — Water, a com-
would have disastrous conse-
modity most of us take
quences for the country's water
quite for granted, is in
economy. (A Syrian attempt to
such short supply in some
do so in 1965 was countered by
parts of the Middle East that,
Israeli artillery fire.)
more than being just a vital re-
Israel also shares a number
source, it's considered a strate-
of aquifers with what will soon
gic asset. Those who have it
become the Palestinian au-
wield power, actual or potential.
tonomous region. One is the
So it's hardly surprising that
source of well water for the
water is, or will be, high on the
three northern valleys (Jezreel,
agenda of almost every forum
Harod, and Beth Shean) that
in the Middle East peace talks:
comprise Israel's bread basket.
the bilateral talks between Is-
Another supplies part of
rael and each of its neighbors;
Jerusalem and the surround-
and the multilateral talks,
ing Jewish settlements. A third
where the focus is on the
is the source of drinking water
preservation and development
for Tel Aviv and environs, the
of shared resources, from the
very heartland of metropolitan
Jordan River to the Dead and
Israel. The question now is who
Red seas.
will control these jointly ex-
Each front has its own set of
ploited resources and how much
problems and
scenarios.
Among the
more sensitive
negotiations on
water rights,
however, will be
between Israel
and the Pales-
tinians, if only
because they
must often
draw on the
same reserves.
In fact, water
is already a
bone of con-
tention between
the sides: the
Palestinians
have been com-
plaining for The Beit Shean reservoir.
years that Is-
rael's Civil Administration in
water will each community
the territories has allocated up
have the right to draw.
to 200 percent more water to Is-
That, in turn, has inspired an
raelis living in the West Bank
interesting debate over how
and Gaza than to Palestinian
best to approach the water is-
consumers. Now they will have
sue: as chiefly a strategic ques-
to jointly decide how to divide
tion or as essentially an
up the limited water on which
economic one.
both peoples depend.
The question arose after the
The tricky thing about water
publication, in the Hebrew dai-
is that it has no respect for na-
ly Ha'aretz, of the gist of a re-
tional frontiers. Rivers that
port prepared for the Jaffee
shape the very character of one
Center for Strategic Studies at
nation (like the Nile) may orig-
Tel Aviv University by water
inate in another; the sources of
experts Yehoshua Schwartz
well water (groundwater re-
and Aharon Zohar, in coopera-
serves or aquifers) may extend
tion with Tahal (Israel's Water
across borders and be drawn
Planning Company). The most
upon by more than one country.
intriguing thing about the re-
Israel is a classic example in
port is that two successive agri-
both these instances.
culture ministers tried to have
The sources of the Jordan,
it suppressed, albeit for very dif-
which feeds the Sea of Galilee
ferent reasons.
(Israel's main national reser-
According to Ha'aretz defense
voir), are on the Golan Heights
editor Ze'ev Schiff, who broke
and in Lebanon, and any at-
the story, former Agriculture
tempt to dam or divert them
Minister Rafael Eitan insisted
j
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that it be shelved because it pm-
posed lines of withdrawal from
the West Bank, which was
anathema to his political out-
look and that of the Shamir gov-
ernment.
His successor, Labor's
Ya'akov Tzur, has tried to keep
it under wraps because he be-
lieves it reveals tactical posi-
tions that Israel might employ
in its negotiations.
Either way, the crux of the
report is now in the public do-
main, and its conclusion is that
Israel should do everything in
its power to hold on to its exist-
ing water assets in both the
West Bank and the Golan
Heights. If pressed to make con-
cessions, it should comply only
in return for sig-
nificant political
benefits plus
guarantees of re-
liable supplies of
imported water
from Turkey,
Egypt, and per-
haps Lebanon
and/or financing
for des a- li-
nization facili-
ties.
In making its
decision, howev-
er, Israel should
take into consid-
eration the de-
gree to which it
has already be-
come dependent
upon the shared
reserves. The
West Bank uses just 7 percent
of the water from the central
mountain aquifer, for example,
while Israel uses all the rest.
Clearly, then, the safest so-
lution, from Jerusalem's stand-
point, is to insist upon
redrawing the borders to incor-
porate the main aquifers into
sovereign Israeli territory.
Offsetting this approach are
the findings of a study con-
ducted by Zvi Eckstein and Yu-
val Nachtom of Tel Aviv
University, together with Dan
Zakkai of the Bank of Israel,
that treats water as an eco-
nomic resource, rather than a
strategic one.
"If we strip the problem of the
visceral fears about water,"
writes Ha'aretz economic editor
Nehemiah Stressler, "we'll find
that what we have is an eco-
nomic problem: how to reach an
effective distribution of re-
sources." ❑