Water politics in the Middle East

http://www.israeleconomy.org/strategic/water.htm

Division for Research in Strategy
Research and Analysis

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 The New Water Politics of the Middle East

By Ilan Berman and Paul Michael Wihbey

[Published in Strategic Review, Summer 1999.]

The crisis over water in the Middle East is escalating. Despite existing agreements, dwindling resources – increasingly affected by pollution, agricultural/industrial initiatives and population growth – have elevated the strategic importance of water in the region. For Middle Eastern nations, many already treading the razor’s edge of conflict, water is becoming a catalyst for confrontation – an issue of national security and foreign policy as well as domestic stability. Given water’s growing ability to redefine interstate relations, the success of future efforts to address water sharing and distribution will hinge upon political and strategic approaches to this diminishing natural resource.

Approaching Crisis: Water Resources in the Middle East

In the Middle East, water resources are plummeting. While representing 5% of the total world population, the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region contains only 0.9% of global water resources.¹ The number of water-scarce countries in the Middle East and North Africa has risen from 3 in 1955 (Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait) to 11 by 1990 (with the inclusion of Algeria, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen). Another 7 are anticipated to join the list by 2025 (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Oman and Syria).²

In addition to its scarcity, much of Middle Eastern water stems from three major waterways: the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile and Jordan River systems. Mutual reliance on these resources has made water a catalyst for conflict, spurring confrontations such as the 1967 War (fomented by Syria’s attempts to divert water from Israel) and the Iran-Iraq War (which erupted from disputes over water claims and availability). Recognition of water’s role as an obstacle in interstate relations has spurred numerous attempts at resolution, including diplomatic efforts (most notably the 1953-1955 U.S.-brokered Johnston negotiations) and bilateral and multilateral treaty efforts, ranging from the 1959 Agreement for the Full Utilization of Nile Waters to the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian Treaty.

Increasingly, however, and despite these agreements, nations have begun to come into conflict over water. The natural scarcity of regional supplies, historically a point of contention, has been reduced to crisis proportions by a variety of factors:

·         With population rates among the highest in the world, countries in the Middle East are consuming water at a much higher rate than can be replenished naturally. Rising populations, estimated to reach 423 million by the turn of the century (and double 25 years thereafter), have increasingly affected water resources in the region; ³

• In an area already critically short of water, this depletion has been compounded by domestic pollution, which has contributed to a deterioration of usable resources and a general decline in the quality of available water; and
• Expanding initiatives in agriculture and industry have further eroded regional water availability. Spurred by growing populations, many nations have begun to overexploit their agricultural capabilities, resulting in desertification (reduction of arable land).

As a result of these factors, per capita water availability in the Middle East has become the worst in the world, representing only 1/3 of Asian and 15% of African levels.⁴ While progressive agricultural methods – such as drip irrigation – exist, they have, as a result of prohibitive costs, been implemented by only a handful of states. Nor have current desalination efforts in the region proven capable of meeting growing demands. The high energy and large costs associated with seawater desalination have limited efforts to cash and energy rich oil-exporting countries such as Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Influenced by declining availability and reductions in overall quality, crisis zones have begun to emerge along the major rivers of the region. Evolving conflicts – between Turkey and Syria over the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers; in the Jordan River Basin between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan; among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Nile River; and within Saudi Arabia – are manifestations of water’s growing role as a strategic and political force.

This will be the Arab world's 

next battle

Population growth and water supply are on a
collision course. Hunger is set to become the
main issue

• 
• • Lester Brown
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 April 2011 21.00 BST
  •  larger | smaller

Long after the political uprisings in the Middle East have subsided,

many underlying challenges that are not now in the news will remain.

Prominent among these are rapid population growth, spreading water

shortages, and growing food insecurity.

In some countries grain production is now falling as aquifers –

underground water-bearing rocks – are depleted. After the Arab

oil-export embargo of the 1970s, the Saudis realised that since

they were heavily dependent on imported grain, they were vulnerable

to a grain counter-embargo. Using oil-drilling technology, they tapped

into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat.

In a matter of years, Saudi Arabia was self-sufficient in its principal

food staple.

But after more than 20 years of wheat self-sufficiency, the Saudis

announced in January 2008 that this aquifer was largely depleted

and they would be phasing out wheat production. Between 2007

and 2010, the harvest of nearly 3m tonnes dropped by more than

two-thirds. At this rate the Saudis could harvest their last wheat

crop in 2012 and then be totally dependent on imported grain to

feed their population of nearly 30 million.

The unusually rapid phaseout of wheat farming in Saudi Arabia is

due to two factors. First, in this arid country there is little farming

without irrigation. Second, irrigation depends almost entirely on a

fossil aquifer – which, unlike most aquifers, does not recharge naturally

from rainfall. And the desalted sea water the country uses to supply its

cities is far too costly for irrigation use – even for the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia's growing food insecurity has led it to buy or lease land in

several other countries, including two of the world's hungriest, Ethiopia and

Sudan. In effect, the Saudis are planning to produce food for themselves with

the land and water resources of other countries to augment their

fast-growing imports.

In neighbouring Yemen, replenishable aquifers are being pumped well

beyond the rate of recharge, and the deeper fossil aquifers are also

being rapidly depleted. Water tables are falling throughout Yemen by

about two meters per year. In the capital, Sana'a – home to 2 million

people – tap water is available only once every four days. In Taiz, a

smaller city to the south, it is once every 20 days.

Yemen, with one of the world's fastest-growing populations, is

becoming a hydrological basket case. With water tables falling,

the grain harvest has shrunk by one-third over the last 40 years,

while demand has continued its steady rise. As a result the Yemenis

import more than 80% of their grain. With its meagre oil exports

falling, with no industry to speak of, and with nearly 60% of its

children physically stunted and chronically undernourished, this

poorest of the Arab countries is facing a bleak and potentially

turbulent future.

The likely result of the depletion of Yemen's aquifers – which

will lead to further shrinkage of its harvest and spreading hunger

and thirst – is social collapse. Already a failing state, it may well

devolve into a group of tribal fiefdoms, warring over whatever meagre

water resources remain. Yemen's internal conflicts could spill over its

long, unguarded border with Saudi Arabia.

Syria and Iraq – the other two populous countries in the region –

have water troubles, too. Some of these arise from the reduced

flows of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which they depend on

for irrigation water. Turkey, which controls the headwaters of

these rivers, is in the midst of a massive dam building programe

that is reducing downstream flows.

Although all three countries are party to water-sharing arrangements,

Turkey's plans to expand hydropower generation and its area of irriga-

tion are being fulfilled partly at the expense of its two downstream

neighbors.

Given the future uncertainty of river water supplies, farmers in Syria

and Iraq are drilling more wells for irrigation. This is leading to over-

pumping in both countries. Syria's grain harvest has fallen by one-fifth

since peaking at roughly 7m tonnes in 2001. In Iraq, the grain harvest

has fallen by a quarter since peaking at 4.5m tonnes in 2002.

Jordan, with 6 million people, is also on the ropes agriculturally.

Forty or so years ago, it was producing more than 300,000 tones

of grain per year. Today it produces only 60,000 tonnes and thus

must import over 90% of its grain. In this region, only Lebanon

has avoided a decline in grain production.

Thus in the Arab Middle East, where populations are growing fast,

the world is seeing the first collision between population growth and

water supply at the regional level.For the first time in history, grain

production is dropping in a region with nothing in sight to arrest the

decline. Because of the failure of governments to mesh population

and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed,

and less irrigation water with which to feed them.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Israel's Appropriation of Arab Water: An Obstacle to Peace

Middle East Labor Bulletin, Spring 1994

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"There is no reason for Palestinians to claim that just because they sit on lands, they have the rights to that water," Mr. Katz-Oz [Israel's negotiator on water] said. "The mountains do not own the water that fall on them. It's the same with Canada and the United States. It's the same all over the world." -- NYT 10/93

On the whole, when it comes to the common water resources shared with Palestinians and other Arabs, Israel ... acts like a great sponge. -- Sharif Elmusa (1993)

Palestinian hopes for genuine self-determination hinge on a number of factors, not the least of which is Israel's ability to solve its perennial and growing water shortage. According to Dr. Hussein A. Amery, of the Department of Geography, Bishop's University, Quebec, Israel uses 17% more than the 1.9 billion cubic meters of water that is renewable from natural sources.

"The deficit in water supply is being met by desalinating brackish salty waters, recycling waste water and over- pumping underground waters." ("Israel's designs on Lebanese water," MEI, 10 September 93 [No. 458] p. 18.)

But these facts and figures don't address the question of equity. Arguably 50% or more of the water that Israel uses is unilaterally appropriated from water that should fairly go to its Arab neighbors. Even the New York Times used the word "theft" when quoting an "Arab" in connection with Israel's appropriation of regional water resources. ("Hurdle to Peace: Parting the Mideast's Waters" by Alan Cowell NYT, 10.10.93 p. 1)As a settler community, the Jewish state has historically taken for itself land and resources belonging to its Arab inhabitants and the neighboring Arab countries. A clear example of Israel's appropriation of the water belonging to Arabs is Israel's interest early on in diverting the waters of the Jordan River from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean and to the Negev.
Accordingly, in 1951, contrary to the armistice agreements and over the protests of U.S. and U.N. officials, the Israelis began moving military units and bulldozers into the demilitarized zone on the Syrian border. Spurred by hostilities in the area over water, in 1953, the Eisenhower Administration prepared a unified plan for the use of the Jordan River. In September 1953, Israel, in an apparent attempt to preempt the American plan, secretly began a crash program to construct a nine-mile long pipeline in the demilitarized zone to divert Jordan River waters.
When the Americans learned of Israel's activities which included around the clock work crews, they protested and President Eisenhower went so far as to suspend vital economic aid to Israel. No announcement about the aid suspension was made at the time, perhaps to keep from drawing the ire of the Zionist lobby at home.
However, soon afterward, the Israelis launched an unrelated attack on a West Bank Jordanian village, killing 53 people which came to be known as the Kibya massacre. As a result of the ensuing furor, on October 18, 1953, the Eisenhower administration made public its cutoff of aid to Israel. Eleven days later, under the pressure from the U.S. Zionist lobby and a pledge by Israel to suspend work on the diversion project, U.S. aid was resumed. (Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, by Stephen Green, William Morrow and Co., N.Y. 1984. "The 1953 Aid Cutoff: A Parable for Our Times," pp. 76- 93.)
Israeli work on diverting the water of the Jordan River was only temporarily suspended -- perhaps for as long as two years. By 1960, however, the diversion project -- which came to be known as the National Water Carrier -- was complete and in fact was the target of the PLO's first (and unsuccessful) attack in 1964.
Jordan and Syria strongly protested Israel's unilateral appropriation of their water because Israel's diversion made local agricultural activity impossible.
Before the Israeli diversion, the U.S. plan apportioned 33% of Jordan River water for Israel's use. As Stephen Green points out, the significance of this figure is that only 23% of the flow of the Jordan River originates in Israel. The Israelis, however, wanted more than 33%. Today, Israel takes virtually all of the Jordan River flow leaving only brackish, unusable water for the Syrians and Jordanians. Moreover, Israel's diversion of the Jordan River water to the Mediterranean littoral and to the Negev, defies an important principle of international law regarding water use; namely that water should not be diverted from its catchment basin.

THE 1967 WAR

The '67 war was preceded by hostilities between the Syrians and the Israelis over Israel's violations of armistice agreements regarding the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria. Israeli encroachments on agricultural lands and raids on villages in the area forced hundreds of Arabs to flee their homes and in turn resulted in the Arab shelling from the Golan Heights which Israel used as an excuse to attack and conquer the area in the Six Day war. (See Laura Drake, "The Golan Belongs to Syria" MEI, 11 September 1992, pp. 24-25.) The Israeli plan to conquer the Golan Heights appears to be the reason that Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the American spy ship, the USS Liberty, a day before the assault on the Golan Heights. Apparently the Israelis didn't want the Americans monitoring their assault on the Golan while Syria had agreed to a cease fire. The Israeli strike resulted in the deaths of 34 American sailors and a cover-up by both governments of Israel's surprise attack on the defenseless ship.When Israel conquered the Golan Heights, they captured the headwaters of the Jordan and thus secured for themselves the greatest part of the flow of the Jordan River. Israel captured the final portion of the Jordan River flow in their 1982 invasion of Lebanon when they included as part of their self-declared "security zone" the Hasbani and Wazzani Rivers which arise in Lebanon and flow into the Jordan.

THE WEST BANK AND GAZA

Ever since the Israelis captured the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-Day War in 1967, they have strictly controlled the water resources in the territories largely because they have become so dependent on Palestinian water emanating from underground aquifers on the West Bank.West Bank water not only makes up 30% of the water in Tel Aviv households but also is critical to preserving the pressure balance which keeps the salt water of the Mediterranean from invading the coastal aquifers.
Israel has permitted no new drilling of agricultural wells for water for the Palestinians in the territories and has permitted fewer than a dozen for domestic use. Moreover, the Israelis charge the Palestinians fees that are three times higher than they charge Israelis for water for domestic use (with even higher relative charges in Gaza).
As Sharif Elmusa points out: "[I]n terms of relative GNP per capita, Palestinians pay a minimum of fifteen times more than Israeli consumers -- a phenomenal difference for water systems managed by the same company." ("Dividing the Common Palestinian-Israeli Waters: An International Water Law Approach" in Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1993, No. 87, p. 63. See also note 11, p. 74.)
West Bank water is so critical to Israeli water usage that it is difficult to imagine the Israeli government making even minor concessions on water issues in upcoming negotiations with the Palestinians.
Indeed, according to press reports, the present public negotiating position of the Israelis is to ignore Palestinian claims to the water of the West Bank and Gaza to "negotiate" instead over new water sources, presumably through desalinization techniques. Needless to say, Palestinians will have difficulty accepting Israel's negotiating policy on water.
The water shortage in Gaza is even more critical than it is on the West Bank. Experts predict that before the year 2000, under current use, the Gaza aquifer will be so depleted that salt water from the Mediterranean will make it unusable.
Even in Gaza where the Arab population outnumbers the approximately 5,000 Jewish settlers by more than 170 to 1, the Israeli government appropriates 10-25% of Gaza water for Jews. (see Elmusa, pp. 61)

THE WATERS OF LEBANON

Zionist interest in the waters of Lebanon goes back as least as far as the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 when Chaim Wietzman wrote to the British Prime Minister explaining that because of its water requirements, a Jewish homeland in Palestine must include the Litani River.In the 50's, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett recorded in his diaries that Moshe Dayan's plan for the control of the Litani River was to "'enter Lebanon, occupy the relevant territory' then the 'territory south of the Litani will be annexed to Israel and everything will fall into place.'" (Quoted in Amery, pp. 18-19)

IS ISRAEL TAKING LEBANON'S WATER?

Since its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 there have been innumerable rumors and many unsubstantiated reports that Israel has been taking more or less water from the Litani River. Since Israel doesn't allow outside observers to the Litani area or to its self-proclaimed "security zone" these rumors and reports have been impossible to verify.However, after the 1982 invasion Israel prohibited the sinking of new wells just as they did on the West Bank. They also "seized all the hydrographic charts and technical documents about the Litani and its hydro-electric installations, and carried out seismic soundings and surveys near the Litani's western bend, most likely to determine the optimum place for a diversion tunnel." (Amery, p. 19)
So far Professor Amery is alone in pointing to the "hydrological" aspect of the barbarous Israeli barrage of Lebanon during the last week of July 1993 where the express purpose was to create hundreds of thousands of refugees and make much of the area uninhabitable.
Amery's analysis suggests that Israel's interest in Lebanon is -- along with its political goals -- to maintain and/or establish control over as much of Lebanese water as possible. Amery notes that since 1985 former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon has been calling for an enlarged "security zone" in Lebanon that stretches to the Awali River (north of the Litani).
Amery quotes a Lebanese newspaper that agues that a larger security zone was already in process of "being established by depopulating and flattening 30 ... villages that border the zone" (p. 19). Longer term, the demographic issue is bound to have a major impact on the politics of water use. The population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and Jordan today is approximately 10 million. Current forecasts are that by 2020 the population of the same area will double to 20 million with no prospect of any significant increase in water supplies. Without a peaceful resolution of land and water issues, instability and possibly more war loom as awful prospects.
Despite or because of the September 1993 Oslo Accords, it is clearly even more urgent to ask if there is any means to convince Israel to reverse its policy of unilaterally taking for itself the legitimate Arab share of the area's water.

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THE END

http://desip.igc.org/TheftOfWater.html