Shragai - Palestinian water theft is tapping Israel dry

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
15 February '12..



Palestinian theft of water in Judea and Samaria has reached nightmare proportions. Every year, 10 million cubic meters of water are stolen from the mountain aquifer under Israeli control, while drilling permits for Palestinians allow for much less. As if that wasn’t enough, just a fraction of the sewage generated by the Palestinians is properly treated, causing considerable damage to the environment.

On a cloudy night a few months ago, shortly after the residents of a number of Arab villages and Israeli settlements in the Hebron Hills region discovered that their faucets had run dry, the Israel Defense Forces descended on the Mekorot water pipe, which runs from Beit Gobrin to Hebron. It was assumed that the disappearing water was caused by illegal Palestinian re-routing and diverting of water from dozens of illegally drilled holes in the main pipeline. Yet, when IDF troops arrived on the scene that night to investigate, what they discovered was hundreds, not dozens, of re-routing points.

The pipes which the Palestinians plugged into the main conduit provided water to pirate irrigation pools which served as makeshift reservoirs of stolen water. The Palestinians used these reservoirs for agricultural needs. Fortunately, the IDF destroyed these reservoirs. Likewise, similar incidents have been reported on the Shiloh-Migdalim pipeline as well as in other areas. The IDF troops came away surprised at the number of illegal holes drilled for purposes of re-routing stolen water. Every year, 3.5 million cubic meters of water in Judea and Samaria are stolen in this fashion.

Dozens of irrigation pools have now been torn down. Dozens of kilometers of illegal piping have been confiscated. This is an endless Sisyphean war, but, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg.

A new study by Professor Haim Gvirtzman, who heads Hebrew University’s Hydrology Studies Program, and whose report was published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, reveals that Israel loses some 10 million cubic meters of water per year as a result of state-sanctioned theft. In broad daylight, Palestinians illegally drill in hundreds of spots without receiving the necessary permits from the joint Israel-Palestinian Authority committee that handles water issues., Either Ramallah willfully ignores these incidents or expresses its approval. Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game.. When Israel shuts down one drilling site, unfortunately, another pops up.


Gvirtzman, who now works for the Water Authority, reveals that the joint Israel-Palestinian committee issued close to 80 drilling permits for Palestinians, the bulk of which were to draw water from the eastern aquifer. Yet the Palestinians used less than half of these permits, “preferring instead to drill without permission in the mountain aquifer, especially in the northern sector in the Jenin area, and in the western district surrounding Qalqilyah and Tul Karem. As a result, Israel has been forced to reduce the scope of water that it pumps from this aquifer in order to prevent the reservoir from becoming salinated.”

Gvirtzman also discovered that of the 52 million cubic meters of sewage that the Palestinians produce every year, only two million are treated in the purification plant that they built in Al-Bireh. “The rest of the sewage flows into tributaries and pollutes the environment as well as the ground water,” he writes.

Seventeen million cubic meters of sewage cross the Green Line. Most of this water is absorbed and treated in Israel, but only after it has damaged the environment and polluted the ground water. This state of affairs stands in total contradiction with the agreements that the Palestinians signed with Israel. There are plans on the books for the construction of dozens of purification plants in towns like Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Tul Karem. All these plants are being subsidized by donor countries, but now the Palestinians have decided that they don’t want to build in Areas A and B, but in Area C (which is under full Israeli military, and administrative control).

The findings in Gvirtzman’s report can be seen on the ground. Standing just a few hundred meters away, the Hebron tributary looks like a pastoral corner that nature has bestowed upon us. The flow of water can be heard from a distance, but anyone who approaches the stream will discern an unbearable stench. The untreated sewage of Hebron, which includes industrial waste and residue produced by metal works, olive-oil factories, and stone-quarrying projects, has rendered the stream a foaming conduit of waste.

Its twin tributary in Nablus has seen a similar fate. There the waste and sewage flows westward in the direction of Tul Karem and the Alexander River. As the stream flows westward, its color changes from sudsy to green after it begins to seep into the rocks that lie in the ground water aquifer, which is shared by Israel and the Palestinians. The Water Authority and the Civil Administration calculated 178 kilometers of sewage flow, most of it through areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There doesn’t appear to be a solution on the horizon.

Rectifying apartheid

A few weeks ago, the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, Shaddad Alattili, traveled to Ashdod to take part in a discussion on the issue of water. The way he views the situation is completely different. “In the joint water committee, we are presented with water and sewage treatment projects in the settlements but we are not willing to recognize them because the settlements were built illegally,” he said.

In his view, the Palestinian refusal to approve projects in the settlements gives Israel a pretext to reject initiatives proposed by Ramallah, like water drilling in the Judean Desert region. According to Alattili, Israel is responsible for the Palestinian failure to build purification plants since it conditions the approval of these projects on Palestinian agreement to build similar ventures in the settlements.

What about the pirate drilling? “These incidents do not pump significant amounts of water and they do not account for the shortage of water in the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “They blame us for the pumping of water from the aquifer, but we don’t have any other choice. In Israel, there is four times the amount of water used for domestic consumption as there is in the PA, and in Gaza just 10 percent of the water there is suitable for human consumption.”

Israel Water Authority officials say Alattili’s comments amount to a “falsehood” not unlike that which can be found in a recent report commissioned by the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee, which accused Israel of “pursuing a ‘new apartheid’ policy with regards to water distribution in the West Bank.”

“In 1967, we indeed inherited a system of apartheid as practiced by Jordan’s King Hussin,” Gvirtzman said. “In those days, just four out of a total of 700 villages in Judea, Samaria and Gaza were hooked up to the water grid. In all the other cities and villages, water was supplied by dragging donkeys and containers. Since the territory came under Israeli control, 95 percent of the population has been connected to the water system. In Judea and Samaria, Israel did for the Palestinians what [Nelson] Mandela did for the blacks in South Africa. It rectified the apartheid.”

According to Gvirtzman, these facts “are supported by a precise mapping of all of the requests that have been made over the course of recent decades and statistics provided by the Palestinians themselves. According to Palestinian water experts, 643 towns and villages -- out of a total of 708 localities -- were hooked up to the water grid as of 2004. The experts also found that in 443 villages there was an internal piping system that channeled water to homes, while in other towns there either wasn’t a grid at all or it had yet to be completed. Today, the water supply to the Palestinians is infinitely better than it is in neighboring countries. In Amman and Damascus, water is available to residents just one or two days a week.”

How much water does a Palestinian drink?

In September 1995, the Oslo Accords were signed. As part of the deal, Israel recognized Palestinian water rights in Judea and Samaria, while acknowledging that the full extent of those rights was to be determined in final-status negotiations. The interim agreement stipulated that the Palestinians’ future water needs would be met by an additional 70-80 million cubic meters per year (in addition to the 118 million cubic meters Israel had provided the Palestinians up to that point). In the interim period of negotiations, Israel pledged to supply the Palestinians with 28 million cubic meters of water per year (a figure which includes five million cubic meters to Gaza), most of which would be pumped from the eastern aquifer.

In practice, not only did Israel follow through on its obligations, but it also went above and beyond what was required. Today, the Palestinians consume 200 million cubic meters of water per year while utilizing the supplementary supplies as stipulated by the accords, not just for the interim period but also for the final-status period. Israel is providing the Palestinians with a quarter of their current water needs, some 50 million cubic meters per year, or almost twice the amount that it committed to providing as part of the accords. For their part, the Palestinians claim that the figures agreed upon are irrelevant, since the Oslo Accords were intended for the interim period to be much shorter while the minimum Palestinian water needs have since multiplied.

Gvirtzman’s study validates another fact that is accepted among the Palestinians as unadulterated truth. For years, the Palestinians have claimed that their water consumption per capita is far lower than that of Israelis, and that the average amount of water that a Palestinian uses is a quarter of that compared to the average Israeli. Gvirtzman’s study reveals that in recent years, the gap has shrunk gradually. Today, there is nearly no difference in quantity between the amount of fresh water consumed by Palestinians and Israelis.

“If the gap between Israeli and Palestinian consumption in 1967 was indeed quite large (508 million cubic meters per year as opposed to 93 million cubic meters), in 2006 the gap was significantly reduced,” he said. While Israelis consumed 170 million cubic meters of water, Palestinians consumed 129 million cubic meters.

“Today the gap has become negligible,” he said. “Even if Israel refrained from providing even one additional cubic meter of water to the PA, the Palestinians have enough water to meet their needs for the next 20 years and beyond. The Palestinians themselves report that 33 percent of the water in their supply leaks (the rate of leakage in Israel is 11 percent). If they plug up the leaks in their municipal supplies and reduce them to a reasonable level, they can save over 10 million cubic meters per year. Adopting efficient methods like the drip irrigation system rather than irrigation by flooding would save them an addition 10 million cubic meters’ while freeing up a lot of water for their cities.”

The professor is hardly optimistic about the future. “One of the main problems is incentive,” Gvirtzman said. “The state of Israel pays Mekorot for the water that it provides the Palestinians, and then deducts this sum from the moneys that it is obligated to transfer to the PA, but a private citizens in the PA takes the water supply for granted since he or she doesn’t pay for it. A landowner who pumps water from a well and a homeowner in Ramallah don’t pay the PA for the water that they consume, so they have no incentive to conserve. In about half of all homes in Palestinian cities, there is no water gauge, and few homes that are hooked up pay for the water.”

“A historic hold”

Gvirtzman’s report is based primarily on data recorded by the Water Authority, and it does give considerable weight to issues related to international law, which the Palestinians cite as entitling them to more than what was agreed. The Palestinians are today demanding that Israel supply 400 million cubic meters per year from the mountain aquifer (twice what the Palestinians consume), an additional 200 million cubic meters per year from Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), and 100 million cubic meters from the coastal aquifer in the Gaza Strip. In total, they are asking for 50 percent of the total amount of fresh water available to Israel (1.35 billion cubic meters per year).

“Legally, international law doesn’t apply because the UN secretary-general, who presented a draft resolution to the General Assembly on the issue of mater, managed to enlist the support of just 16 countries, while the minimum required for approval is 35 countries,” said Gvirtzman. “But in any event, the agreement that was signed by the two sides trumps the parameters of international law, so what was agreed upon in the Oslo Accords is what Israel is obligated to provide from a legal standpoint. Even if 35 countries do sign the draft in the UN, we would still have the upper hand since Israel has a historic hold on the mountain aquifer which did not come as a result of the victory in the Six-Day War, so there is nothing to worry about regarding international law. It just provides more validity to our position.”

Should we concede part of our just rights in favor of water that is treated in desalination plants?

“That is a political and ideological issue,” he said. “In 2013, we will complete the construction of five desalination facilities that will erase Israel’s production-to-consumption deficit. But, today, after the drought years, the water levels are beneath the minimum red lines in all of the national reservoirs. Until the plants are built, the water levels are expected to drop to emergency quantities and the salification process will only accelerate.

“From a hydrological standpoint, relinquishing control of the aquifers is dangerous. The mountain aquifer is a natural, underground source of water that serves as a reservoir for rainwater gathered in the winter, both in years with a lot of precipitation as well as in dry years. Giving up the aquifer is to concede an underground reservoir and to relinquish our ability to navigate a water crisis. With the Kinneret emptying out, the amount of water being pumped from this aquifer amounts to 100,000 cubic meters per hour. That equals the amount that eight desalination plants would produce in an hour. If the mountain aquifer becomes unavailable to Israel and the volume of water that it pumps shrinks, we will have to build an additional eight desalination plants on top of the five that are already planned. Building these plants would be unfeasible from an economic standpoint.

“Relying on desalination will make water more expensive for farmers and it will lead to an abandonment of land that has already been worked, a loss of crops, and a serious crisis in the agricultural sector. Giving up the mountain aquifer would only be the beginning.”

Link:http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3145


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