How Israel Handles Water.

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by Margot2, Aug 5, 2014.

  1. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Take a look... Israel's mismanagement of the water assets has contributed to the establishment of both the PLO and Hamas... But, Zionists will tell you its because Arabs are savages.

    Israel ranks 49th on the green index but first among desert nations.

    Few notions are more deeply rooted in Zionism's founding mythology than the exhortation to "make the desert bloom." The earliest Zionist pioneers arrived in Palestine with a strong faith in science and technology, shaped by the Jewish enlightenment that began in the late 18th century.

    They also brought an earthy sense of self-reliance that made growing their own food—even in the bleak Negev Desert—a high priority. Amid the ashes of the Holocaust, that determination only deepened. "For those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands, and even millions," Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1954, when he moved to the Negev himself. As Israeli society grew increasingly devout in the 1970s, the prophet Isaiah provided further inspiration: "The wilderness and the parched land shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."

    At first glance, today the parched land indeed looks glad. The arid coastal plain sprouts with fields of watermelons, tomatoes and sunflowers, and Israel has earned a reputation for creative use of sparse water supplies. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Israelis pioneered the use of "drip irrigation"—which delivers water directly to a plant's roots. More recently, Israeli experiments with desalination and water recycling have drawn attention around the world.

    The Yale/ Columbia Environmental Performance Index ranks Israel 49th overall and best among desert nations, in part for managing the stress irrigation puts on water supplies. Still, some scientists worry about the environmental cost of building an economy in the desert. Israel consumes 1.8 billion cubic meters of water each year; 15 years from now, it will need an additional 1.5 billion cubic meters to meet demand rising due to population and economic growth, according to Israeli water experts.

    About half of Israel's clean water is used for agriculture, yet farming accounts for only 2 percent of Israel's GNP. Considering those numbers, some environmentalists are beginning to question whether agricultural growth in a desert climate like Israel's is really sustainable. The question, says David Brooks, a Canadian water expert and environmentalist, "is not whether water is used efficiently in Israeli agriculture, but whether agriculture is an efficient way to use water in Israel."

    Water has long been a deeply political issue in the Levant; wars are waged over it. Aquifers and other sources of water tend to straddle political boundaries. Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister during the Six Day War, was a water-company executive who spent long hours poring over maps of potential sources.

    According to "The Iron Wall," a history by Avi Shlaim, Eshkol believed that "without control over the sources of water the Zionist dream could not be realized."

    In 1964 Israel completed the National Water Carrier, designed to pipe drinking water from the Sea of Galilee, in Israel's north, to the Negev in the south. Syria and other Arab states then moved to divert the headwaters of the Jordan, igniting fierce clashes that included Syrian-sponsored Palestinian guerrilla attacks. The water wars were one of the key factors in the establishment of the PLO in 1964.


    Diverting water from the Galilee has contributed to another devastating environmental consequence: the drying of the Dead Sea. Much of the water that once made its way down the Jordan River is no longer available to replenish the body of water downstream. Before 1964, the Dead Sea used to receive 1.3 billion cubic meters of water each year, according to Eilon Adar, who heads the Water Research Institute at Ben-Gurion University.

    Now "at most it gets 200 million cubic meters a year." Since the inauguration of the National Water Carrier, the sea level has fallen by 21 meters, and continues to drop at a rate of roughly one meter each year. "The Dead Sea is dying," says Adar. "There's an environmental toll here, and we're really worried."

    There's also an economic toll: the dangerous sinkholes developing under the Dead Sea have badly hurt the region's tourism industry, according to Adar.

    Israel's romantic notions of making the desert bloom have encouraged heavy government subsidies for farming. Israeli farmers pay roughly 40 percent as much for their water as those who use it for nonagricultural purposes, says Hillel Shuval, a water expert at Jerusalem's Hadassah Academic College. The subsidies help Israeli farmers export much of their produce, which makes little environmental sense in an arid country. Exporting one kilogram of wheat is equivalent to exporting 1,000 liters of water, which means Israel in effect exports 100 million cubic meters of water each year, about as much as its desalination plants produce. Two years ago Israel inaugurated a massive desalination plant in the coastal city of Ashkelon, but desalination is costly and energy intensive; each cubic meter of clean water costs roughly 60 cents to produce, according to Adar. "Subsidizing water for agriculture results in irrational use, in growing crops which otherwise wouldn't be economically feasible," says Hillel.

    The Negev is the laboratory for new technologies Israelis hope may solve their water troubles. Some of the most ambitious recycling experiments are found there, just minutes from the cabin where Ben-Gurion retired to the desert. In a sun-bleached sandlot surrounded by date palms and desert scrub, 41-year-old Amit Ziv explains how his kibbutz pumps 500,000 cubic meters of warm, brackish water each year from an aquifer 800 meters below ground. The water is first cycled several times through man-made ponds for growing fish including sea bass, tilapia and barramundi, then funneled to fields of wheat, olive and jojoba. "We wrote the book on this stuff," says Ziv.

    Experts, though, wonder how far technology can boost supply. Drip irrigation and desalination can only do so much. Making the desert bloom was a good idea "in its time," says Brooks, but now "the very idea of developing the Negev is wrong." The day to rethink Israel's romance with desert farming may be here.

    http://www.newsweek.com/how-israel-handles-water-91221
     
  2. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Its easy to understand why the Dead Sea has retreated so dramatically and why the coastal aquifer is back filling with salt water seepage.. There is NO recharge for the mountain aquifer.
     
  3. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    FYI...

    The acquisition of water assets has driven conflicts with Israel's neighbors since the early 1950s.
     
  4. MGB ROADSTER

    MGB ROADSTER Banned

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    Can we know why the OP hates Israel so much ?
    Pure endless hatred !!
     
  5. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Hatred? Are you joking.. Israel has created horrendous water problems since the 1950s .. and made matters far worse since 1967.. Its documented fact... Additionally, a number of American universities have done studies on the Hydrology of the Jordan Basin and predicted this is exactly what would happen. How could you possibly NOT know the facts of the mess the Israelis have made with their gross mismanagement?
     
  6. MGB ROADSTER

    MGB ROADSTER Banned

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    ALL OF THIS is part of the Palestinian wall of lies !!
    Ask yourself this.
    Why Israel transfer water to Jordan ?
    Why Arab Egypt refuse to deliver electricity to GAZA ?
    Why 99% of Israeli Arabs do not want to live in a future Palestinian Bedouin state ???

    Whem people will learn the Palestinian wall of lies , all will change.
     
  7. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    My God... now you want Jordan and Egypt to clean up the mess the Israelis have made.
     
  8. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Graphene membrane purifies water...
    :cool:
    Nanotechnology Can Help Deliver Affordable, Clean Water
    March 28, 2016 - Clean drinking water is essential for good health and disease prevention. But according to the World Health Organization, some 663 million people — one out of every 10 people in the world — do not have access to safe water. The high cost of water purification devices keeps clean water out of reach for many communities, especially in developing countries. But science may soon help solve this problem.
     
  9. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    Your continuing threads blaming Israel for Muslim extremism and terrorism including Palestinian extremism continues. First you blame the internal civil wars and terrorism attacks from Lebanon as the fault of Ziionists now this? Lol? Water shortage in deserts is a Zionist weapon designed to subject Palestinians.

    By the way Margo just so we are clear the words you provide above and I quote; "But, Zionists will tell you its because Arabs are savages."...those are your words-you create those words and project them on this booga booga monster you created called Zionist. Its what you do create false negative stereotypes of Zionists to demonize them and project negative thoughts on them, When you engage in such a device of projecting comments from Zionists you think they say, I respond and remind you those comments originate in your head,

    Now let's look at the other side of the argument, the one you don't of course present:

    http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-devastating-truth-about-water-and-Palestinian-statehood

    Oh sure I will quote too:


    "On June 15, 2011, the Jerusalem Post published an article about the Palestinian water crisis, written by the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, Dr. Shaddad Atilli.

    In his article, Atilli wrote that Israel’s ‘discriminatory policies’ are to blame for the lack of water in Palestinian society. He claimed that Israel uses the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC) to veto and delay Palestinian water projects. He also wrote that Israel illegally exploits 90% of the shared water sources.

    Furthermore, he claimed that because of the Israeli theft of water and the destruction of water wells and treatment plants, people realize that the two-state solution is rapidly fading.
    His libelous article, full of distortions, outright lies and false accusations, was yet another proof of the PA’s intransigence.

    Recently our organization, Missing Peace, obtained authentic papers documenting meetings of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), and correspondence between Colonel Avi Shalev, head of the International relations branch of COGAT, and Dr.Atilli. These documents paint an entirely different picture.

    Contrary to Atilli’s outrageous accusations, the Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

    Let’s examine some of the claims in Atilli’s article and compare them with the picture that emerges from the JWC and COGAT documents.

    ‘Israel delayed and vetoed Palestinian water projects,’ says Atilli.

    First of all, article 40 (14) in the Oslo Accords clearly states that all JWC decisions about water projects in the West Bank need mutual agreement.

    Once approved, JWC projects for the territories under Palestinian control (Areas A and B) do not need any further Israeli involvement.

    Projects in Area C, where Israel is in control, need approval from the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA).

    Since 2000 the PWA submitted 76 requests for permits to the office of the Civil Administration.

    Subsequently 73 permits were issued by ICA and three denied because there was no master plan.

    In a letter of June 8 2009, Shalev responded to Atilli’s complaint that ICA did not honor a PWA request to issue 12 of these permits. Shalev wrote that these permits had already been issued in 2001, and that ICA wondered why the PWA did not execute these projects.

    Another 44 JWC-approved projects, the majority in Areas A and B, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in Jenin that received approval in 2008 - have not been implemented. The German government even withdraw a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the PWA could not handle the project.

    When, back in November 2009, the PWA complained about a lack of funds, the Israeli government offered to finance water projects for Palestinian communities. The PA has yet to respond to this offer.

    ‘Israel allocates only 10% of the shared water sources to the Palestinians’ claims Atilli.

    The water quota for the West Bank were mutually agreed upon in the Oslo Accords. As a result, 33% of the water in the aquifers under the West Bank is allocated to the Palestinians.

    In 1993 the Palestinians could pump up 117 million cubic meters and Israel would provide an additional 31 million. In 2007 200 million cubic meters were allocated to the PA, of which Israel provided 51.8 million.

    However, of those 200 million cubic meters, only 180 million were actually used.

    The main reason for this is that the PWA did not implement projects in the Eastern aquifer that would have solved much of the Palestinian water crisis. More than half of the wells approved for exploitation of the Eastern aquifer have still not been drilled. The permits were issued in 2000.

    In a letter written on April 4, 2001, the civil administration urged the PWA to execute these projects. A letter from June 8 2009 repeated that request.

    Atilli also lied about Palestinian water consumption. In the JPost article he claimed that Palestinians are ‘limited to an average of just 60 liters.’ However, in 2009 his own PWA published a report that mentioned an average supply of 110 liters per capita per day.

    Atilli’s level of chutzpa is best shown by his third claim, about Israel stealing water and destroying Palestinian water projects. In fact, Palestinians steal millions of cubic meters of water per year by drilling illegal holes into the water pipes of the Israeli water provider Mekorot. The Civil Authority fixes 600 of these illegal taps each year.

    Furthermore, since 2008 Israel has asked the PA to re-establish the joint JSET water patrols that fought water theft before the El Aksa intifada.

    The PA has refused.

    Another reason for the loss of water is the poor maintenance of the Palestinian water infrastructure. A staggering 33% of the fresh water supply gets lost because of leaks, theft and poor maintenance.

    Other documents provided solid evidence that the closing of 250 illegal wells was agreed upon in the JWC meetings. For example, minutes of the JWC meeting on November 13, 2007 show a consensus decision to destroy ‘illegal drillings and connections.’ Nevertheless, Atilli acted as if he never attended these meetings or co-signed the joint decisions.

    He even had the gall to write urgent appeals to the international community as soon as ICA, after numerous appeals to the PWA to follow up on the agreed closure of illegal wells, finally closed those wells.

    These are only few examples of the shocking way the Palestinian Authority neglected the basic needs of its citizens and cynically uses water as a weapon in a PR campaign against Israel. It shows that, contrary to reports dealing with progress in state building, the PA is far from ready for statehood.

    There is, however, yet another conclusion to be drawn here.

    The stubborn refusal to work with Israel on mutual interests like improvement of the water infrastructure, and the way the PA subsequently uses that lack of improvement to demonize Israel, prove that the PA is not interested in the two-state solution, or peace.

    In fact, the bid for UN recognition of a state without a peace agreement, and the way the PA deals with Israel regarding water are part of the same campaign. The goal of that campaign is, as Mahmoud Abbas pointed out in his infamous NYT op-ed, the continuation of the conflict by different means.

    By now it has become clear that the use of water as weapon is one of those means."
     
  10. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    Here are some other articles that provide a response to Margot's attempts to blame Zionists for water shortages. Her assumption it also creates terrorists is the kind of unsubstantiated accusation without any evidence of cause and relation I would expect from someone whose agenda is to blame Zionists for the world's ills. My impression is that Margot's words blaming Zionists sounds like a post traumatic reaction to unresolved conflicts Moses caused.

    http://www.cohav.org/water-issues.html

    Here I quote just like Margot:

    "Complaints by anti Israel writers continue to point the finger at Israel (who else?) for the problems of water supplies to the Palestinians. Yet nearly all these claims are never backed up by facts. So let’s look at the recent comments and the real situation.

    Claim
    a) Israel’s ‘discriminatory policies’ are to blame for the lack of water in Palestinian society.
    b) Israel uses the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC) to veto and delay Palestinian water projects.
    c) Israel illegally exploits 90% of the shared water sources.
    d) Israeli is stealing water and destroying of water wells and treatment plants.

    These claims are full of distortions, outright lies and false accusations, and yet another proof of the PA’s intransigence.

    To answer these claims, Missing Peace,a European group www.missingpeace.eu obtained authentic papers documenting meetings of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), and correspondence between Colonel Avi Shalev, head of the International relations branch of COGAT, and Dr.Atilli, the Palestinian representative. These documents paint an entirely different picture. In fact, the Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

    Claim - Israel delayed and vetoed Palestinian water projects

    Facts
    a) Article 40 (14) in the Oslo Accords clearly states that all JWC decisions about water projects in the West Bank need mutual agreement. Once approved, JWC projects for the territories under Palestinian control (Areas A and B) do not need any further Israeli involvement.

    b) Projects in Area C, where Israel is in control, need approval from the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). Since 2000 the PWA submitted 76 requests for permits to the office of the ICA. Subsequently 73 permits were issued by ICA and three denied because there was no master plan.

    c) In a letter of June 8 2009, Shalev responded to Atilli’s complaint that ICA did not honor a PWA request to issue 12 of these permits. Shalev wrote that these permits had already been issued in 2001, and that ICA wondered why the PWA did not execute these projects.

    d) Another 44 JWC-approved projects, the majority in Areas A and B, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in Jenin that received approval in 2008 - have not been implemented. The German government has even withdraw a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the PWA could not handle the project.

    e) When, back in November 2009, the PWA complained about a lack of funds, the Israeli government offered to finance water projects for Palestinian communities. The PA has yet to respond to this offer.

    Claim - Israel allocates only 10% of the shared water sources to the Palestinians.

    Facts
    a) The water quota for the West Bank were mutually agreed upon in the Oslo Accords and 33% of the water in the aquifers under the West Bank is allocated to the Palestinians.

    b) In 1993 the Palestinians could pump up 117 million cubic meters and Israel would provide an additional 31 million. In 2007 200 million cubic meters were allocated to the PA, of which Israel provided 51.8 million. However, of those 200 million cubic meters, only 180 million were actually used.

    c) The main reason for this is that the PWA did not implement projects in the Eastern aquifer that would have solved much of the Palestinian water crisis. More than half of the wells approved for exploitation of the Eastern aquifer have still not been drilled. The permits were issued in 2000.

    d) In a letter written on April 4, 2001, the civil administration urged the PWA to execute these projects. A letter from June 8 2009 repeated that request.

    Claim - Palestinians are limited to an average of just 60 liters per capita per day.

    Facts
    a) In 2009 Atliil’s own PWA published a report that mentioned an average supply of 110 liters per capita per day.

    b) According to the 2012 Water Report released by the Head of Water Administration for Judea, Samaria and Gaza

    1) Israel has 1170 Million cubes (MCM) of fresh water available for 7.8 million residents. This is equivalent to 150 cubic metres per capita.

    2) The Palestinians in Judea and Samaria have 200 MCM plus an additional 52 MCM supplied by Israel under the 1995 agreement although that agreement specified only 23.6 MCM. This is equivalent to 125 cubic metres per capita.
    Palestinians consume 95 cubic metres per capita per year of the fresh water that is available to them. Israel supplies 29 cubic metres of this fresh water.

    c) Note that:

    1) Jordan has more fresh water available per capita than Israel (172 cubic metres per capita per year against 153 for Israel), yet we give 40 millcubic metres a year to Jordan under the terms of the peace treaty.

    2) Jordan loses 40% of its fresh water to evaporation, poor infrastructure, leakage etc. compared to Israel's 10%.


    Claim - Israel is stealing water and destroying Palestinian water projects

    Facts
    a) In fact, Palestinians steal millions of cubic meters of water per year by drilling illegal holes into the water pipes of the Israeli water provider Mekorot. The Civil Authority fixes 600 of these illegal taps each year. Furthermore, since 2008 Israel has asked the PA to re-establish the joint JSET water patrols that fought water theft before the Al Aksa intifada. The PA has refused.

    b) In 2010 over 300 illegal wells were drilled in Judea and Samaria, which ultimately can destroy the acquifer and cause an ecological disaster for the Palestinians.

    c) Another reason for the loss of water is the poor maintenance of the Palestinian water infrastructure. A staggering 33% of the fresh water supply gets lost because of leaks, theft and poor maintenance.

    Lack of Water Conservation by PA

    a) The 2012 Water Report released by the Head of Water Administration for Judea, Samaria and Gaza indicates that in 2010 Israel recycled 80% of waste water compared to 0%, yes, not a typo error, 0% by the Palestinians.

    b) Even though the donor countries have expressed their readiness to fully fund the construction of waste water treatment plants for all major Palestinian cities, only one such plant has been constructed on the Palestinian side.

    Lack of Action by PA
    Other documents provided solid evidence that the closing of 250 illegal wells was agreed upon in the JWC meetings. For example, minutes of the JWC meeting on November 13, 2007 show a consensus decision to destroy ‘illegal drillings and connections.’ Nevertheless, Atilli acted as if he never attended these meetings or co-signed the joint decisions.

    He even had the gall to write urgent appeals to the international community as soon as ICA, after numerous appeals to the PWA to follow up on the agreed closure of illegal wells, finally closed those wells.

    These are only few examples of the shocking way the Palestinian Authority neglected the basic needs of its citizens and cynically uses water as a weapon in a PR campaign against Israel. It shows that, contrary to reports dealing with progress in state building, the PA is far from ready for statehood.

    In contrast, the
    Palestinians are violating the Agreement by preventing the construction of
    sewage treatment plants (despite financing from donor countries), by
    drilling pirate wells and by hooking up to Mekorot' s water pipelines without
    permission.


    Conclusion

    The stubborn refusal to work with Israel on mutual interests like improvement of the water infrastructure, and the way the PA subsequently uses that lack of improvement to demonize Israel, prove that the PA is not interested in the two-state solution, or peace.

    In fact, the bid for UN recognition of a state without a peace agreement, and the way the PA deals with Israel regarding water are part of the same campaign. The goal of that campaign is, as Mahmoud Abbas pointed out in his infamous NYT op-ed, the continuation of the conflict by different means.

    By now it has become clear that the use of water as weapon is one of those means.

    Further corroboration of this point comes from a recent doctoral thesis by Lauro Burkart a Swiss graduate of the Institute of International and Development studies in Geneva. Burkart writes: ‘It is not the Israeli occupation policy but the Palestinian political resistance against joint management and cooperation that is responsible for the relatively slow development of the Palestinian water sector and the deteriorating human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories’ and ‘There is convincing evidence of mismanagement within the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA).’ "

    As well:

    http://israelseen.com/2014/02/25/the-truth-behind-the-palestinian-water-libels

    Here is the summary of the above study repudiating blames against Israel for water shortages:
    by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman-Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies:

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant underground water resources, build a seawater desalination plant, fix massive leakage from their municipal water pipes, build sewage treatment plants, irrigate land with treated sewage effluents or modern water-saving devices, or bill their own citizens for consumer water usage, leading to enormous waste. At the same time, they drill illegally into Israel’s water resources, and send their sewage flowing into the valleys and streams of central Israel. In short, the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is not interested in practical solutions to solve the Palestinian people’s water shortages, but rather perpetuation of the shortages and the besmirching of Israel."

    As the above report points out there are 6 basic facts of course Margot woudl never acknowledge:

    "1. The Oslo agreements grant the Palestinians the right to draw 70 million cubic meters from the Eastern Mountain Aquifer (ground water reservoir). Yet this water resource is not currently being capitalized on by the Palestinians; the waters spill untapped underground into the Dead Sea. As per the Israeli-Palestinian agreement, some 40 sites were identified for drilling into this aquifer in the eastern Hebron hills region, and permits were granted to the Palestinians by the Israel-PA Joint Water Committee. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, the Palestinians have drilled at just one-third of these sites, despite the fact that the international community has offered to finance the drilling of all sites. If the Palestinians were to drill and develop all these wells, they could have completely solved the existing water shortage in the Hebron hills region. But the Palestinians have preferred to drill wells on the Western Mountain Aquifer, the basin that provides groundwater to the State of Israel. Instead of solving the problem they have chosen to squabble with Israel.

    2. The Palestinians do not bother fixing water leaks in city pipes. Up to 33 percent of water in Palestinian cities is wasted through leakage. Upkeep on the Palestinians’ urban water infrastructure has been completely neglected. By comparison, leakage from Israeli municipal water pipes amount to only 10 percent of water usage.

    3. The Palestinians refuse to build water treatment plants, despite their obligation to do so under the Oslo agreement. Sewage flows out of Palestinian towns and villages directly into local streams, thereby polluting the environments and the aquifer and causing the spread of disease. Despite the fact that donor countries are willing to fully fund the building of treatment plants, the Palestinians have managed to avoid their obligations to build such facilities. (Only over the past two years has Israeli pressure moved the PA forward a bit on this matter.)

    4. The Palestinians absolutely refuse to irrigate their agricultural fields with treated sewage effluents. By comparison, more than half the agricultural fields in Israel are irrigated with treated waste water. Irrigating Palestinian agricultural fields with recycled water instead of fresh water would free up large amounts of water for home usage. This would greatly reduce the water shortage in many places.

    5. Some Palestinian farmers irrigate their fields by flooding, rather than with drip irrigation technology. Drip irrigation, as practiced in Israel, brings water directly to the root of each plant, thereby reducing water consumption by more than 50 percent. Flooding fields causes huge water evaporation and leads to great waste.

    6. The international community has offered to build a desalination plant for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have refused this gift. A desalination plant could completely solve the Gaza Strip’s water shortages. The Palestinians refuse to build this plant because they claim they have the right to access the fresh groundwater reservoir in Judea and Samaria, and they are prepared to suffer until they realize this dream. In the meanwhile, Gaza residents suffer from severe shortages of water."

    Is it the fault of Zionists that Palestinians have water shortages. The Professor says no its PA mismanagement for failure to initiate these things:

    "Today, the Palestinians consume some 200 million cubic meters of water per annum in Judea and Samaria. The Palestinians could easily raise that amount by at least 50 percent, without any additional assistance or allocation from the State of Israel. This would require several simple actions:

    If the Palestinians were to begin drilling the Eastern Mountain Aquifer, at the sites already approved for drilling, they very quickly would secure an additional 50 million cubic meters of water per year.

    If the Palestinians were to reduce urban water waste from 33 percent to 20 percent by fixing the main leaks in their urban water pipes (something that can be done without great effort), they would immediately benefit from 10 million additional cubic meters of water per annum.

    If the Palestinians were to collect and treat their urban waste water, they would gain at least 30 million cubic meters of water a year. This would free up 30 million cubic meters (per annum) of fresh water, currently used for agriculture, for home usage. This would allow them both to improve their urban water supply and to expand agricultural lands.

    If the Palestinians were to adopt drip irrigation technology, they would save 10 million cubic meters a year. This would allow them to expand their irrigated lands.

    In the Gaza Strip, too, the Palestinians could easily double the amount of water available, without additional assistance from the State of Israel. If the Palestinians agreed to build a desalination plant on the Gaza coast (funded entirely by the international community), they would increase the amount of water available by 60 to 100 million cubic meters a year. If they fix leakages, treat and recycle sewage, and adopt drip irrigation, they would double their water allocation, as well."

    Oh Margot one last thing the Prof. pointed out and that is:

    Palestinians cause their own problems by engaging n Illegal drilling of wells and in fact those awful Israelis subsidize the drinking water of Palestinians::

    "As of 2010, the Palestinians had drilled about 250 unauthorized wells into the Western and Northern Aquifers, in violation of the Oslo agreements. Since 2010 the number of unauthorized wells being dug has continued to rise at an alarming pace. This has caused a reduction in the natural discharge of water in the Beit Shean and Harod valleys, forcing Israeli farmers to reduce their agricultural plantings. Ultimately, the State of Israel has been forced to reduce its pumping at the Mountain aquifer from 500 million cubic meters per annum in 1967 to about 400 million cubic meters per annum today.

    The Palestinians also steal water by pirate tapping into pipes belonging to Mekorot, Israel’s national water company. As a result, Mekorot’s ability to supply water to Israelis and Palestinians alike has been compromised. The stolen water is used mainly for agriculture, not for home usage.

    Sustainable development: The PA purposefully flaunts the principle of “sustainable development” – a core standard of effective and modern economic management – in every way. Authorities that do not fix water leaks, do not collect and treat sewage, refuse to conserve water used for agriculture, and do not collect payment for water usage are in flagrant violation of this principle.

    Which brings us to another dirty little secret about the Palestinians: most West Bank and Gaza residents and businesses do not pay the PA for the water they use, in either their homes or fields. There are simply no water meters on pumping wells and no water meters at the entry to most homes, so it is impossible for the PA to measure the amount of money owed by individual consumers. This, of course, leads to widespread water waste. People who don’t pay for their water usage have no motivation to conserve.

    Reliance on Israel: The Palestinians purchase about 50 million cubic meters of water from Israel’s Mekorot water company each year, but the Palestinian Authority does not pay for this water directly. Rather, the State of Israel pays Mekorot, and then deducts the costs of the water from the customs and tax monies that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority at Israeli ports. However, it must be noted that the Palestinian Authority pays Mekorot for just 80 percent of the actual cost of the water it consumes. Negotiations to raise water prices have dragged on for more than 10 years, and Israel has given up many times.

    Because the water market is administered in an opaque fashion, the Israeli consumer effectively subsidizes the Palestinian consumer. The average Israeli pays approximately 10 shekels per cubic meter of water. About 0.2 shekels of that fee goes to subsidize the water provided to the Palestinians below cost."
     
  11. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So here are the facts:

    * Israel doesn’t give water to the Palestinians. Rather, it sells it to them at full price.

    * The Palestinians would not have been forced to buy water from Israel if it were not an occupying power which controls their natural resource, and if it were not for the Oslo II Accords, which limit the volume of water they can produce, as well as the development and maintenance of their water infrastructure.

    * This 1995 interim agreement was supposed to lead to a permanent arrangement after five years. The Palestinian negotiators deluded themselves that they would gain sovereignty and thus control over their water resources.

    The Palestinians were the weak, desperate, easily tempted side and sloppy when it came to details. Therefore, in that agreement Israel imposed a scandalously uneven, humiliating and infuriating division of the water resources of the West Bank.

    * The division is based on the volume of water Palestinians produced and consumed on the eve of the deal. The Palestinians were allotted 118 million cubic meters (mcm) per year from three aquifers via drilling, agricultural wells, springs and precipitation. Pay attention, Rino Tzror: the same deal allotted Israel 483 mcm annually from the same resources (and it has also exceeded this limit in some years).

    In other words, some 20 percent goes to the Palestinians living in the West Bank, and about 80 percent goes to Israelis – on both sides of the Green Line – who also enjoy resources from the rest of the country.

    Why should Palestinians agree to pay for desalinated water from Israel, which constantly robs them of the water flowing under their feet?

    * The agreement’s second major scandal: Gaza’s water economy/management was condemned to be self-sufficient and made reliant on the aquifer within its borders. How can we illustrate the injustice? Let’s say the Negev residents were required to survive on aquifers in the Be’er Sheva-Arad region, without the National Water Carrier and without accounting for population growth. Overpumping in Gaza, which causes seawater and sewage to penetrate into the aquifer, has made 90 percent of the potable water undrinkable.

    Can you imagine? If Israelis had peace and justice in mind, the Oslo agreement would have developed a water infrastructure linking the Strip to the rest of the country.

    * According to the deal, Israel will keep selling 27.9 mcm of water per year to the Palestinians. In its colonialist generosity, Israel agreed to recognize Palestinian future needs for an additional 80 mcm per year. It’s all detailed in the agreement with the miserly punctiliousness of a capitalist tycoon. Israel will sell some, and the Palestinians will drill for the rest, but not in the western mountain aquifer. That’s forbidden.

    But today the Palestinians produce just 87 mcm in the West Bank – 21 mcm less than Oslo allotted them. The drought, Israeli limits on development and drilling new wells, and limits on movement are the main reasons. Palestinian mismanagement is secondary. So, Israel “gives” – or rather sells – about 60 mcm per year. True. That is more than the Oslo II Accords agreed for it to sell. And the devastating conclusion: Palestinian dependence on the occupier has only increased.

    * Israel retained the right of the mighty to cap infrastructure development and rehabilitation initiatives. For example, Israel has imposed on the Palestinian Authority pipes that are narrower than desired, forbids connecting communities in Area C to the water infrastructure, tarries in approving drilling, and delays replacing disintegrating pipes. Hence the 30 percent loss of water from Palestinian pipes.

    * 113,000 Palestinians are not connected to the water network. Hundreds of thousands of others are cut off from a regular supply during the summer months. In Area C, Israel forbids even the digging of cisterns for collecting rainwater. And that’s called giving?

    * Instead of spending time calculating whether the average Israeli household’s per-capita consumption of water is four times or “only” three times that of Palestinian consumption, open your eyes: The settlements bathed in green, and across the road Palestinian urban neighborhoods and villages are subject to a policy of water rotation. The thick pipes of Mekorot (Israel’s national water provider) are heading to the Jordan Valley settlements, and a Palestinian tractor next to them transports a rusty tank of water from afar. In the summer, the faucets run dry in Hebron and never stop flowing in Kiryat Arba and Beit Hadassah.

    All of this is intentionally misleading?
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.574554
     
  12. tidbit

    tidbit New Member Past Donor

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    "Much of the water that once made its way down the Jordan River is no longer available to replenish the body of water downstream." Why is that? Is it because of the many dams Syria has built, or simply because of irrigation and heavy use? Could one reason for the war in Syria be over water? ISIS has targeted dams before. They 'confiscated' the dam in Mosul and got a big ass whooping by the US over it. Whoever controls the water supply in the Middle East controls the Middle East; and therefore a future of eternal warfare over water seems possible.

    I live in the northwest part of Washington State where water is plentiful, at least on the western side of the Cascade Mountains. The eastern side is a desert with over 5 million acres of irrigated farm land. The state has wagged its finger at the farmers already over their water usage because their hoarding of water is at the expense of output from electrical dams and salmon and sockeye fish who can't make it upstream to spawn due to low water levels.

    I've heard the southwestern United States has its eyes on our water. Northwesterners might have something to say about this though, especially the farmers. I doubt that there would be a civil war over OUR water, but the farmers in the northwest might think otherwise if their water supply is diverted to the southwest. Tell Pacific Northwesterners who spend 300 days a year in the rain that they have to drastically conserve water because much of it has been diverted to California, and there might by another 'Syrian' conflict right here in the US.

    Someone posted a thread yesterday about over-population. Some people stated that the planet could hold up to 20 billion people--no problem. I don't see how that is possible with our dwindling supply of fresh water, and other resources. Unless we come up with the 'miracle cure' for profitable desalinization we will soon run out of water. By 2025, 2/3 of the people on our planet will not have enough water for the basic necessities of life. That is profound.

    I list scarcity of water, among many other things, as one of the reasons why I hope I don't have grandchildren. I can see water going for $10 a bottle within the next 50 years. I don't want my grandchildren living in a world where water is scarce and expensive. I don't want them to be part of the percentage of the world who does not have enough water for the basic necessities of like.
     
  13. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    Middle east is pretty Arid, most conflicts thus are driven by water.
     
  14. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Israel's gross mismanagement of water assets has been studied by a half dozen American universities since 1950.. Look for "Hydrology of the Jordan Basin".

    Ria Raab knows exactly what he/she is talking about...

    Dams in Syria? lololol.. typical BS.. Look at a map.

    Israel's water quality is terrible.. you can measure ecoli and heavy metals in parts per thousand.
     
  15. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    How is that a reply to what I said? What freaking Dams?
     
  16. HBendor

    HBendor New Member

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    <MOD EDIT - Removed deleted quote>

    Who are the Palestinians? An Arab Invention. CBN.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbf2LjF8OPw

    Palestinians
    &#8216;Peoplehood&#8217; Based on a Big Lie
    Eli E. Hertz

    The Palestinians claim that they are an ancient and indigenous people fails to stand up to historic scrutiny. Most Palestinian Arabs were newcomers to British Mandate Palestine. Until the 1967 Six-Day War made it expedient for Arabs to create a Palestinian peoplehood, local Arabs simply considered themselves part of the &#8216;great Arab nation&#8217; or &#8216;southern Syrians.&#8217;

    &#8220;Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to believe it.&#8221;
    Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels

    &#8220;All [that Palestinians] can agree on as a community is what they
    want to destroy, not what they want to build.&#8221;
    New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

    There is no age-old Palestinian people. Most so-called Palestinians are relative newcomers to the Land of Israel

    Like a mantra, Arabs repeatedly claim that the Palestinians are a native people. The concept of a &#8216;Stateless Palestinian people&#8217; is not based on fact. It is a fabrication.

    Palestinian Arabs cast themselves as a native people in &#8220;Palestine&#8221; &#8211; like the Aborigines in Australia or Native Americans in America. They portray the Jews as European imperialists and colonizers. This is simply untrue.

    Until the Jews began returning to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers from the late 19th century to the turn of the 20th, the area called Palestine was a God-forsaken backwash that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.

    The land&#8217;s fragile ecology had been laid waste in the wake of the Arabs&#8217; 7th-century conquest. In 1799, the population was at it lowest and estimated to be no more than 250,000 to 300,000 inhabitants in all the land.

    At the turn of the 20th century, the Arab population west of the Jordan River (today, Israel and the West Bank) was about half a million inhabitants and east of the Jordan River perhaps 200,000.

    The collapse of the agricultural system with the influx of nomadic tribes after the Arab conquest that created malarial swamps and denuded the ancient terrace system eroding the soil, was coupled by a tyrannous regime, a crippling tax system and absentee landowners that further decimated the population. Much of the indigenous population had long since migrated or disappeared. Very few Jews or Arabs lived in the region before the arrival of the first Zionists in the 1880s and most of those that did lived in abject poverty.

    Most Arabs living west of the Jordan River in Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza are newcomers who came from surrounding Arab lands after the turn of the 20th century because they were attracted to the relative economic prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British in the 1920s and 1930s.

    This is substantiated by eyewitness reports of a deserted country &#8211; including 18th-century reports from the British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, French author and historian Count Constantine Volney (Travels through Syria and Egypt, 1798); the mid-19th-century writings of Alphonse de Lamartine (Recollections of the East, 1835); Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867); and reports from the British Consul in Jerusalem (1857) that were sent back to London.

    The Ottoman Turks&#8217; census (1882) recorded only 141,000 Muslims in the Land of Israel. The real number is probably closer to 350,000 to 425,000, since many hid to avoid taxes. The British census in 1922 reported 650,000 Muslims.

    Aerial photographs taken by German aviators during World War I show an underdeveloped country composed mainly of primitive hamlets. Ashdod, for instance, was a cluster of mud dwellings, Haifa a fishing village. In 1934 alone, 30,000 Syrian Arabs from the Hauran moved across the northern frontier into Mandate Palestine, attracted by work in and around the newly built British port and the construction of other infrastructure projects. They even dubbed Haifa Um el-Amal (&#8216;the city of work&#8217;).

    The fallacy of Arab claims that most Palestinians were indigenous to Palestine &#8211; not newcomers - is also bolstered by a 1909 vintage photograph of Nablus, today an Arab city on the West Bank with over 121,000 residents. Based on the number of buildings in the photo taken from the base of Mount Gerizim, the population in 1909 &#8211; Muslim Arabs and Jewish Samaritans &#8211; could not have been greater than 2,000 residents.

    Family names of many Palestinians attest to their non-Palestinian origins. Just as Jews bear names like Berliner, Warsaw and Toledano, modern phone books in the Territories are filled with families named Elmisri (Egyptian), Chalabi (Syrian), Mugrabi (North Africa). Even George Habash &#8211; the arch-terrorist and head of Black September &#8211; bears a name with origins in Abyssinia or Ethiopia, Habash in both Arabic and Hebrew.


    Palestinian nationality is an entity defined by its opposition to Zionism, and not its national aspirations.

    What unites Palestinians has been their opposition to Jewish nationalism and the desire to stamp it out, not aspirations for their own state. Local patriotic feelings are generated only when a non-Islamic entity takes charge &#8211; such as Israel did after the 1967 Six-Day War. It dissipates under Arab rule, no matter how distant or despotic.

    A Palestinian identity did not exist until an opposing force created it &#8211; primarily anti-Zionism. Opposition to a non-Muslim nationalism on what local Arabs, and the entire Arab world, view as their own turf, was the only expression of &#8216;Palestinian peoplehood.&#8217;

    The Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a charismatic religious leader and radical anti-Zionist was the moving force behind opposition to Jewish immigration in the 1920s and 1930s. The two-pronged approach of the &#8220;Diplomacy of Rejection&#8221; (of Zionism) and the violence the Mufti incited occurred at the same time Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq became countries in the post-Ottoman reshuffling of territories established by the British and the French under the League of Nation&#8217;s mandate system.

    The tiny educated class among the Arabs of Palestine was more politically aware than the rest of Arab society, with the inklings of a separate national identity. However, for decades, the primary frame of reference for most local Arabs was the clan or tribe, religion and sect, and village of origin. If Arabs in Palestine defined themselves politically, it was as &#8220;southern Syrians.&#8221; Under Ottoman rule, Syria referred to a region much larger than the Syrian Arab Republic of today, with borders established by France and England in 1920.

    In his book Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition, Daniel Pipes explains:

    &#8220;Syria was a region that stretched from the borders of Anatolia to those of Egypt, from the edge of Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of today&#8217;s states, the Syria of old comprised Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, plus the Gaza Strip and Alexandria.&#8221;

    Syrian maps in the 21st century still co-opt most of Greater Syria, including Israel.

    The Grand Mufti Al-Husseini&#8217;s aspirations slowly shifted from pan-Arabism &#8211; the dream of uniting all Arabs into one polity, whereby Arabs in Palestine would unite with their brethren in Syria - to winning a separate Palestinian entity, with himself at the helm. Al-Husseini was the moving force behind the 1929 riots against the Jews and the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt against two non-Muslim entities in Palestine &#8211; the British and the Jews. He gathered a large following by playing on fears that the Jews had come to dispossess, or at least dominate the Arabs.

    Much like Yasser Arafat, the Grand Mufti&#8217;s ingrained all-or-nothing extremism, fanaticism and even an inability to cooperate with his own compatriots made him totally ineffective. He led the Palestinian Arabs nowhere.

    The &#8216;Palestinian&#8217; cause became a key rallying point for Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East, according to Oxford historian Avi Shlaim. The countries the British and French created in 1918-1922 were based largely on meridians on the map, as is evident in the borders that delineate the Arab states today. Because these states lack ethnic logic or a sense of community, their opposition to the national aspirations of the Jews has come to fuel that fires Arab nationalism as the &#8216;glue&#8217; of national identity. (see details on the ramifications of British and French policy, which plague the Middle East to this day in the chapter &#8220;The European Union.&#8221;)

    From the 1920s, rejection of Jewish nationalism, attempts to prevent the establishment of a Jewish homeland by violence, and rejection of any form of Jewish political power, including any plans to share stewardship with Arabs, crystallized into the expression of Palestinianism. No other positive definition of an Arab-Palestinian people has surfaced. This point is admirably illustrated in the following historic incident:

    &#8220;In 1926, Lord Plumer was appointed as the second High Commissioner of Palestine. The Arabs within the Mandate were infuriated when Plumer stood up for the Zionists&#8217; national anthem Hatikva during ceremonies held in his honor when Plumer first visited Tel Aviv. When a delegation of Palestinian Arabs protested Plumer&#8217;s &#8216;Zionist bias,&#8217; the High Commissioner asked the Arabs if he remained seated when their national anthem was played, &#8216;wouldn&#8217;t you regard my behavior as most unmannerly?&#8217; Met by silence, Plumer asked: &#8216;By the way, have you got a national anthem?&#8217; When the delegation replied with chagrin that they did not, he snapped back, &#8220;I think you had better get one as soon as possible.&#8221;

    But it took the Palestinians more than 60 years to heed Plumer&#8217;s advice, adopting Anthem of the Intifada two decades after Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 &#8211; at the beginning of the 1987 Intifada.

    Under the Mandate, local Arabs also refused to establish an &#8216;Arab Agency&#8217; to develop the Arab sector, parallel to the Jewish Agency that directed development of the Jewish sector (see the Chapter &#8220;Rejectionism&#8221;).

    In fact, the so-called patriotism of indigenous Muslims has flourished only when non-Muslim entities (the Crusaders, the British, the Jews) have taken charge of the Holy Land. When political control returns to Muslim hands, the ardent patriotism of the Arabs of Palestine magically wanes, no matter how distant or how despotic the government. One Turkish pasha who ruled Acco (Acre) between 1775 and 1804 was labeled Al Jazzar, The Butcher, by locals.

    Why hasn&#8217;t Arab representative government ever been established in Palestine, either in 1948 or during the next 19 years of Arab rule? Because other Arabs co-opted the Palestinian cause as a rallying point that would advance the concept that the territory was up for grabs. &#8220;The Arab invasion of Palestine was not a means for achieving an independent Palestine, but rather the result of a lack of consensus on the part of the Arab states regarding such independence,&#8221; summed up one historian. Adherents to a separate Palestinian identity were a mute minority on the West Bank and Gaza during the 19 years of Jordanian and Egyptian rule - until Israel took control from the Jordanians and the Egyptians in 1967. Suddenly a separate Palestinian peoplehood appeared and claimed it deserved nationhood - and 21 other Arab states went along with it.

    Palestinianism in and of itself lacks any substance of its own. Arab society on the West Bank and Gaza suffers from deep social cleavages created by a host of rivalries based on divergent geographic, historical, geographical, sociological and familial allegiances. What glues Palestinians together is a carefully nurtured hatred of Israel and the rejection of Jewish nationhood
     
  17. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    o.k. so lets keep with the quotes then shall we.....


    source: http://www.theisraelproject.org/water-facts-about-israeli-and-palestinian-use-agreements/; Water: Facts about Israeli and Palestinian Use, Agreements:



    "Washington, Mar. 22 – Today is the 19th annual World Water Day, held to celebrate and observe the earth’s limited water resources. Below is information on the issues facing the water supply in the West Bank:

    Israel is in full compliance with the terms for water use and supply as outlined in the Oslo II peace process and delineated in the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement. In fact, Israel provides 30 percent more water to the Palestinians than required, with the total amount of water available to them exceeding agreed-upon terms.

    When Israel first gained control of the West Bank in 1967, just four of the 708 Palestinian towns and villages could access running water. Now, 641 of those areas – and more than 96 percent of the Palestinian population – have access to running water. Israel’s network of pipesboosted water supply for Palestinians from 64 million cubic meters (MCM) per year to 120 MCM per year. Despite Palestinian claims, there is almost no difference in the amount of water Israelis and Palestinians use. As of 2012, per capita water useis 150 MCM for Israelis and 140 MCM for Palestinians.

    The Palestinians have mismanaged their water supply, with water losses in the Palestinian network amounting to 33 percent of total water resources. The Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) has failed to upgrade its system and use resources provided to them, ranging from wells authorized by Israel to international assistance.

    The PWA also has failed to construct enough water treatment facilities; as a result, 63 percent of its wastewater flows untreated into streams and the West Bank countryside. The wastewater could be treated and reused for agricultural purposes to free up fresh water supplies for human consumption, as done in Israel.

    Despite international donations for this purpose, the PWA is not moving forward on its its water treatment projects. Instead, it allows the continuation of a system in which the untreated effluent pollutes the environment and contaminates the wells and aquifers of the West Bank.

    The PWA fails to treat 94 percent of the wastewater produced by Palestinian towns and village; by comparison, Israel recycles about 75 percent of its wastewater, primarily for agricultural uses.

    If the Palestinians were to enact measures to prevent water losses, reuse treated water and utilize the Eastern Aquifer, problems of water access and distribution could be greatly eased.

    The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in September 1995,stipulated that Israel’s future water supply to the Palestinians would be 70-80 MCM per year, in addition to the 118 MCM they were using at the time they signed the agreement. The accord over water resources was to have lasted five years. However, both Israel and the Palestinians have continued to work within the parameters of the agreement.

    At present, 96 percent of West Bank Palestinians have daily access to running water, whereas in neighboring countries such as Jordan, most towns don’t have such access.

    Inefficiencies and violations in the Palestinian water network
    •As of 2012, Israel has approved the drilling of 71 wells for drinking and agricultural uses, as well as 22 observation wells. But the Palestinian Water Authority has yet to drill about half of them.
    •All water wells have to be approved by the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee (JWC). However, Palestinians have dug over 250 wells in violation of the 1995 agreement. The PA has supported such violations by connecting the unapproved wells to the electricity network.
    •The Palestinians illegally siphon water from the Israeli water provider, Mekorot, which supplies both Israelis and Palestinians. For this reason, there are water shortages in Hebron, Bani Naim, Beita and other Palestinian villages and communities.
    •The Palestinians have not developed the Eastern Aquifer despite the fact that the JWC has approved every request to drill wells in it.

    Palestinian failure to build sewage facilities and ensuing problems
    •The Water Works Committee of the JWC approved laying hundreds of kilometers of water pipes throughout the West Bank and the construction of dozens of storage reservoirs and pumping stations.[19]
    •The Palestinians have failed to construct sewage treatment facilities as required of them in the Interim Agreement due to mismanagement, poor maintenance, hydrological errors and engineering mistakes. This has led to polluted water supplies and environmental degradation. For example, the Hebron stream, which flows toward the Be’er Sheva Valley, has now become polluted and nearby Palestinian and Israeli communities suffer from polluted water, bad odors, flies and mosquitoes. The Nablus stream which flows westward is also now polluted. The westward flow of this stream pollutes water inside Israel.
    •Many other streams have effectively become wastewater channels for Palestinian towns and cities and the untreated water subsequently pollutes the Mountain Aquifer which then affects water drawn from wells. This has led to the contamination and closure of a number of wells in the Bethlehem district, the Jerusalem district and some in the Jordan Valley as well.
    •Of all the wastewater that emanates from the West Bank, about 27 percent comes from the Israeli population and 73 percent from the Palestinian population.
    •Israel’s use of treated wastewater, its desalination activities, measures to reduce water losses in the water system and other water-saving procedures add 800 MCM per year to its water supply, amounting to 33 percent of Israel’s total water usage.
    •According to a report by the European Commission, Israel uses more treated wastewater effluents (on a percentage basis) per capita for agricultural irrigation and wastewater than any other country in the world. Israel is also second in overall wastewater reuse after California."
     
  18. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    The actual water situation is complex. In a paper entitled, " The Israeli-Palestinian Water Conflict: An Israeli Perspective
    by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman , a hydrologist with the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew Universit.

    He goes into specific point by point detail refuting the Palestinian claims (that Margot and Ria Raeb advance )that Israel is denying West Bank Palestinians water rights negotiated under the Oslo Accords.

    Givirtzman specifically examined the Palestinian Authority claims that it suffers from water shortages in its towns and villages due to the Israeli occupation and specifically their demand for more than 700 million cubic meters of water per year (MCM/Y), including rights over the groundwater reservoir of the Mountain Aquifer, the Gaza Strip Coastal Aquifer and the Jordan River which would if taken seriously amount to more than 50 percent of the total natural water available between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River which the PA claims for itself.

    Gvirtzman shows that Israel has in fact fulfilled all its obligations as per the agreements signed in 1995 with the Palestinian Authority, and in fact exceeds them in direct contradiction to the PA spin.

    He shows that the PA currently consumes 200 MCM of water every year and Israel provides about 50 MCM of it which exceeds their obligations under the accords signed with the PA.

    Unlike the PA which make unilateral demands for water and accuses both Jordan and Israel equally of being unfair (oh you won't find Ria or Margot suggesting Jordan is equally accused by the PA, how would that look) Givirtzman's eport proposes a practical plan for Israeli-Palestinian water sharing in the future.

    That's why I focus on it. <MOD EDIT - Rule 3 - Flamebait>
    the Professor provides a constructive solution to help both sides.

    You can find it at:http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/docs/GvirtzmanWP180112.pdf
     
  19. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    <MOD EDIT - Removed calling out of other members - Rule 4>

    It is a fact that its precisely because the PA clings to a constitution calling or the seizing of all of Israel and incorporating it into a sharia law state with Jordan and that it openly supports and condones terrorism against Israel until this is achieved, that it can not expect and interferes with its ability to be helped by Israel.

    In the world of Margot and Ria Raeb where everything is the fault of Zionists, the corrupt and incompetent PA bares no responsibility for its mismanagement of water and we are just supposed to take the PA at its word that its all Israel's fault.

    The article quoted in Haaretz was completely repudiated but hey it looks good.

    Here' an article on the world leading work Israel is engaging in with water management:

    http://www.thetower.org/article/how-israel-is-solving-the-global-water-crisis/

    The irony of the above article shows if the PA actually cared about its people it would have made peace with Israel long ago to share in the above technology. It won't. The very notion of recognizing a Jewish state equal to it, let alone able to do things it can not, paralyzes it.

    As the article shows and I quote from it:

    "Israeli innovations in agriculture aren&#8217;t just about using less water; they&#8217;re also affecting which crops we grow. And that, it turns out, depends a lot on finding seeds that can use less fresh water to grow more food...

    Seed-breeding may sound futuristic and vaguely creepy. But farmers have been doing it for centuries, and Israelis have been working on developing drought-resistant seeds since 1939. As the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine reached a crescendo, Palestinians decided to boycott Jewish farmers, refusing to sell them seeds. Fearing for their future, Zionist farmers banded together and, through a cooperative called Hazera, began to think about what kind of crops would need to be grown in order to accommodate a huge increase in population in a land with scarce water resources. &#8220;By 1959,&#8221; Siegel writes, &#8220;Hazera began exporting its surplus seed inventory to countries with climates similar to Israel&#8217;s. Soon thereafter, it evolved into a global business with offices around the world.&#8221;

    Israel today is a seed-breeding giant, competing in world markets, with a specialty in water-efficient crops, including the short-stalked wheat and closely-bunched tomatoes. Israelis are on the ground in Africa, too, helping provide water-efficient seeds to subsistence farmers. They&#8217;ve also invested heavily in research into genetically modified seeds (GMOs) that include a wide variety of water-efficient vegetables, most of which aren&#8217;t marketable yet because of a still-widespread public resistance to GMOs in Europe and elsewhere."

    So what has stopped Palestinians or for that matter Arab countries from doing the same?

    How long do we here this ridiculous and pathetic attempt to blame Zionists for the failure of the Palestinian people and Arab world to develop anything or themselves?

    Saudi Arabia, the country Margot champions builds water salinization plants, why not with all its money build from for the West Bank Palestinians? What is stopping them?
     
  20. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No not everything, just what has happened since 1947 when the European Colonists invaded and again in 1969.
    You claim that but provide no evidence.

    Until the European Colonists have been driven out or at least been assimilated into a democratic State of Palestine. This tends to be the history of European Colonies, they prosper for a while but eventually become democratic involving the indigenous population. Israel is different in that she pursues a active policy of ethnic cleansing.
     
  21. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I was replying to H Bendor who suddenly decided to discuss whether Palestinians actually existed, but of course Israelis may do as they please without any question. How dare we respond to the chosen ones.
     
  22. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Oh yes they most certainly did mismanaged water assets.. They have over pumped the aquifers since taking them in 1967.. The coastal aquifer is back filling with salt water and the main one inland is full of ecoli and heavy metals.

    The River Jordan is reduced to a trickle and in some places is a cess pool.. The Dead Sea has retreated by hundreds of yards .. Israeli use to change water minister every 6 or 8 months ... none were science guys... Basically everything Israel has done has changed the water table ... forever..

    They were warned repeatedly in early 1950-1952 by two studies .. Loudermilk and Johnston.
     
  23. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    First off Margot, Rai Raeb quoted a column. Your saying he knows what he is talking about is silly. He has not provided anything other than to contribute an opinion article that made numerpus allegations without any documentation for those allegations, and then which I provded a hydrology report repudiating each accusation which of course you don't address.

    Neither you nor I Margot let alone Ria Raeb are hydrologists. The best we can do is provide quotes from others. Don't pretend you or I or Ria Raeb are water experts. Its silly. We only know what we repeat from others on the topic.

    Speaking of silly, you stated, " Israel's gross mismanagement of water assets has been studied by a half dozen American universities since 1950.. "

    So provide them.

    Next you made the comment, "Israel's water quality is terrible..you can measure ecoli an dheavy metal parts per thousand."

    Provide the sources for the above.

    Now here are my sources to prove what you say above is false:

    https://wrrc.arizona.edu/isreal-learning-experience

    http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fu...l:_Innovations_overcoming_water_scarcity.html

    http://www.strauss-water.com/technology/israel-leads-the-way

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-schwab/israel-is-the-unsung-hero_b_9212810.html

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-israel-became-a-water-superpower/


    Here is an interesting article as to why Israel is quiet on its water surplus:

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.570374
     
  24. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    In reponse to Tidbit's post 12:

    Yes water has been a source of tension between Syria and Israel for sure,.

    Now in regards to your California situation and I have travelled there.

    I do appreciate in your great state, water is abundant in some places and short in others.

    That said you may find this interesting: (its an article about US-Israel cooperation on water shortage technology exchange by Israel to the US to help in California)

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4683198,00.html

    Here's another:

    http://www.israel21c.org/israeli-water-tech-flows-to-thirsty-california/
     
  25. Yetzerhara

    Yetzerhara Banned

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    Here is a report from Michael Zaide, Strategic Planning Engineer, Planning Division, Water
    Authority, Ministry of National Infrastructure, Israel in a paper entitled, Draught and Arid Land Water Management:


    http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/israel/drought.pdf

    It explains the challenges Israel was/is faced with managing water.
     

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