Op-Ed Contributors

Water may not be big hurdle to Mideast peace

By David Harris (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-21 07:52

The United States Middle East envoy George Mitchell met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, two days after he held talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

No details of the sessions have been made public other than the Israelis' desire to move as soon as possible from indirect to face-to-face meetings and the fact that the talks are initially concentrating on the issues of borders and security.

Water was a sub-category of the first topic discussed in peace talks that got underway this week. While the issue will crop up in negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, Xinhua has learnt that it is not likely to be as hotly contested as analysts suggested a few years ago.

It used to be argued by Israel that handing the West Bank to the Palestinians would mean a farewell to one of the country's largest reserves of water. The main sources of water for Israelis are famously the Sea of Galilee, but also the water embedded beneath the West Bank.

As matters stand today, even though the aquifers in the West Bank are theoretically in Palestinian territory, they are controlled by Israel, in Palestinian eyes. The Palestinians argue that a joint water committee leaves the Israelis holding most of the cards.

Israel has reduced the amounts of water it consumes from the West Bank, but the Palestinians allege that the settlers are given a far more plentiful supply than their Palestinian neighbors.

Another thorny area is control of the Jordan Valley and with it the once mighty Jordan River. Nowadays there is a dry riverbed but the Palestinians would like to receive a share of the level of water that once flowed through the valley.

However, with any lasting solution that includes permanent boundaries, much of the controversy surrounding the water issue will take care of itself, according to the Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, Gidon Bromberg.

"For the most part, the ground water is already shared ... (so) the border would be of little difference ... All natural sources of water are shared between Israel and its neighbors, so in the past I would have said that water is a high-politics issue, but today it shouldn't be," said Bromberg.

Part of the reason for this more relaxed approach to water is that Israel has become increasingly independent in terms of water. By the end of 2011, Israel hopes to be producing an annual 500 million cubic meters of desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea, which is more than the entire Sea of Galilee.

Xinhua News Agency

(China Daily 05/21/2010 page8)