JNF eBook Vol 4 - JNF eBook Series

JNF eBook Vol 4
Messerschmid, interviewed by Amira Hass, also notes that large quantities of sewage and
industrial waste are still allowed to flow to the sea, making Israel one of the biggest polluters
of the Mediterranean. “For Israel to consume all the water it does, it must keep that water
away from its neighbors and from the people it is occupying. Israel uses water from the
Golan, Jordan comes out the loser in the arrangement for usage of the Yarmouk waters, and
Lebanon was not permitted to use fair quantities of the Hatzbani waters. Wherever Israel is
located downriver, it uses military force to ensure that most of the water that flows in that
river will reach Israel…. The Jordan is a river of the past… Nothing remains of it since Israel
has been pumping so extensively from Lake Kinneret.” (also known as the Sea of Galilee, or
Lake Tiberias)
In more than 35 years of occupation, Israelis failed to invest in Palestinian infrastructure, in
water supply and wastewater and solid waste facilities, though this is a duty under
international law. Israeli authorities and their policies obstruct, delay and prevent the
implementation of projects. International donors are pressured to also serve the illegal Jewish
settlements. Often, funded projects are permanently put on hold because of the permit system
and the checkpoints that prevent workers and equipment from accessing sites.
Mark Zeitoun, co-leader in the London Water Research Group and the University of East
Anglia Water Security Research Centre, has written extensively about transboundary
cooperation and conflict in which domination is dressed up as cooperation (p. 90). Findings
indicate that water problems are chiefly rooted in power imbalances between two sides,
permitting a highly asymmetric outcome. “The Israeli assault on the main electrical power
plant in Gaza in June 2006 denied tens of thousands of people access to water and further
endangered the highly contaminated sources that lie under the sands. The water towers of
over fifty villages in southern Lebanon were crippled by damage inflicted during the summer
2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah…. The destructive power games with water in the
region are momentous, and regularly occur below the radar screen, with superficial
understanding and inadequate concern from the international diplomatic, donor and academic
communities. Zeitoun writes that frequent NGO and media reports of water cooperation,
particularly about the Joint Water Committee made up of Palestinians and Israelis, deflects
attention from the extreme power imbalance.
David Brooks of CIDA, member of Canada’s delegation to the Middle East Multilateral Peace
Talks on water and the environment…. commented on Jordanian/Israeli water agreement, in
which not a word is said about water rights for the Palestinians, nor about giving them a role
in managing the waters of the Jordan valley: “Palestinians are not even party to the
negotiations,” Brooks observes, “Their omission is staggering given that most of the Lower
Jordan River forms the border between Jordan and what is likely in the near future to be
Palestinian, not Israeli territory.” (Chomsky 1995).
Like Messerschmid, Zeitoun’s work exposes a range of false claims about rational water
management. “Israeli over-abstraction of the Western Aquifer may be further aggravating the
situation. Israeli supply-driven water policy will meet domestic demand from whatever source
is available. When the level of the Lake of Tiberias is too low, the difference is not made up
through reduced consumption, but through increased reliance on the hidden groundwater
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