Amnesty's travesty

Martin Sherman
Guest Columnist:JPost
19 November 09

The Israeli occupation changed local agriculture profoundly. It introduced modern technology, including mechanization, precision tillage, pest control, plastic covering of crops for temperature control, high yielding varieties, postharvest processing of produce, marketing and export outlets. It also introduced efficient methods of irrigation, including sprinkler and especially drip irrigation. Consequently, output increased greatly, and farming was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.

Daniel Hillel, Rivers of Eden, Oxford University Press, 1994

The above excerpt is sufficient to heap richly-deserved ridicule on the recent Amnesty report claiming that Israel's avaricious water policy has gravely compromised Palestinians' human rights. Miraculously, the Amnesty report was published to coincide perfectly with a vicious crusade launched across US campuses by Omar Barghouti, a Tel Aviv University graduate student, campaigning for - among other things - the boycott of Tel Aviv University, together with the entire Israeli academic establishment (avowed leftists and all).

By some curious coincidence, one of the issues raised by Barghouti to justify the BDS (boycott-cum-divestment-cum-sanctions) campaign was Israel's alleged exploitation of water resources to implement a process of "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid." Predictably - if not persuasively - Amnesty denied any hint of collusion with the Barghouti initiative, emotively entitled "Palestine: Thirsting for Justice."

The facts, however, paint a very different - indeed antithetical - picture to that painted by the A/B (Amnesty/Barghouti) duo. For by every conceivable measure of consumption of fresh water, the lot of the Palestinians has improved dramatically - indeed beyond all recognition - since 1967 under Israeli administration, whether it be overall consumption, per capita consumption, consumption relative to Israel/Israelis, conveyance of running water to households, area under agricultural cultivation or size of the agricultural product.

In the period 1967-2006 the overall annual consumption of the Palestinians in the West Bank grew by 300 percent - from 60 million cubic meters to 180 million cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15% - from 86 cu.m. to 100 cu.m. By contrast the overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1411 million cu.m. to 1211 million cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted an amazing 300% from 508 cu.m. to 170 cu.m. - a decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for agricultural irrigation and of naturally occurring water by artificially produced (desalinated) water for domestic use. The Palestinians, by contrast, have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed upon sewage purification plants, allowing untreated effluents to endanger "downstream" Israeli supplies.

Moreover, from 1967 to the years preceding Oslo, the Palestinian household consumption of water rose dramatically under Israeli rule - by almost 600%, significantly higher than in Israel where domestic consumption in the same period rose by approximately 230%. But not only did consumption by households improve, so did conveyance to households. In 1967 only 50 West Bank villages were connected to a running water system whereas by the early 1990s the number rose to 260.

LIKEWISE, AS can be inferred by the opening citation from Hillel, there was a dramatic enhancement of agricultural performance - even though water allocations were not increased. This was facilitated by more advanced methods of cultivation/irrigation introduced under Israeli rule. (In this regard it should be remembered that Israeli farmers have had their water allocations significantly reduced since 1967.) This resulted in an increase of the cultivated area by about 160% and of the agricultural product by 1200%.

Furthermore, the malicious and mendacious claims that the luscious lawns and shimmering swimming pools in the Jewish settlements are unfairly and provocatively depriving Palestinians of water are belied by a single statistic. For Israel in fact conveys more water from inside the pre-1967 borders into the West Bank (nearly 56 million cu.m.) than the total consumption of the entire Jewish population in the settlements across the Green Line ( just over 48 million cu.m.).

(Read full article)
.

Fresh Water Source

The world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant (and a target of Gazan missiles) is in the Ashkelon area. The desalination plantprovides fresh water to Israel and supplies Gaza with its drinking water. The Israeli government plans to build four more plants which will make the country water independent.

The Ashkelon plant has been targeted by Gazan missiles. A Gazan missile hit would hurt Israel but would also stop all the fresh water flow to Gaza. Which, of course, gave me the idea for today's cartoon.

The story of Israel's technological advances in converting sea water to fresh drinking water probably didn't make it to your local newspaper (or the International Media for that matter) but here's a recent piece from Popular Mechanics:

"The Ashkelon Desalination Plant, which opened in 2005, converts more than 26 billion gallons of Mediterranean Sea water into fresh water for the State of Israel each year—5 to 6 percent of total demand. Ashkelon is not only the largest reverse-osmosis desalination plant in the world, it's also one of the few public plants to recover waste heat to improve efficiency and reduce costs." -more

Syria is Drying Up

If given the opportunity, Syria will ruin our main water source
Guy Bechor
Ynet/Israel Opinion
08.03.09

Syria is experiencing an economic holocaust. There is no other way to describe what the Syrian regime is so much trying to hide. The country is drying up, and no less than 250,000 farmers were forced in the past three years to abandon their land and migrate to the large cities. They live in tents there, completely neglected by the regime. These figures appeared in a special study undertaken by the United Nations and published on the al-Arabiya website.

The immense Euphrates River, Syria’s main source of water, is drying up. The Turks are stopping its water in their territory, so that Syria and Iraq are receiving a declining portion of the water. Within about 10 years, the river is expected to dry up completely outside Turkish territory. Today already, it reaches Syria with contaminated water and therefore its fish, an important source of livelihood, is becoming extinct.

As result of the drought that had been plaguing Syria for several years now, another important Syrian water source, the Aasi (Orontes) River, is drying up as well. Its water is becoming saltier and increasingly contaminated, and its fish are dying off. And without fish, there is no livelihood. Entire villages fed by its waters for hundreds of years are simply being deserted.

Ground water in the country had reached such nadir that it is no longer possible to use the roughly 420,000 illegal wells dug by residents over the years. If there is no water, there is no agriculture; people proceed to leave the village and move to the city. As there is no work there either, the distress is terrible and political pressures builds up.

Many of the farmers leaving their villages are Kurd, which makes the problem an ethnic one. The Kurdish refugees accuse the regime of doing nothing for them. For several years now they have been living in thousands of tents near the big cities without being addressed.

Should Israel pay for Syrian failures?

It turns out that the ruling Baath party is at fault for everything. During the 1960s, the party decided to turn Syria into a grain-exporting state. They viewed it as a victory of the Syrian agrarian revolution. For that reason, they forced the farmers to shift from herding, on semi-arid land, to growing grain. The regime turned a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of wells that were dug in order to water the grain. Any economist who dared to speak out against this policy was jailed.

Now, with the terrible drought, the grim results are overwhelming this land of 20 million people, half of them farmers. Instead of the 1.9 million tons of grains they expected to produce this year, the farmers managed to supply only 892,000 tons. Ruin in Syrian terms. The implication is that Syria is importing its grains today and has no money.
(For full article)