The Middle East has had several years of drought with threats of even less rain in the years to come. Across the region, from Israel to Iraq, there’s more use of water and less water available and that’s exacerbating the political tensions and problems. Linda Gradstein reports, in the first of her two reports on the Middle East’s growing water crisis.
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LISA MULLINS: Water has been a source of tension in the Middle East for a long time now, and now a prolonged drought and even the threat of even less rain in years to come are raising fears of worse times ahead.   In fact, there is a concern that a shortage of water could lead to a violent conflict in the region.  Linda Gradstein reports from Israel and the West Bank on the growing impact on the region’s water crisis.

LINDA GRADSTEIN: Khaled Rahayla, a 43-year-old farmer, lives in a corrugated tin shack in the Jordan Valley, a fertile agricultural area, where he grows vegetables like green peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini on rented land.  In a good year he can make a profit of a few thousand dollars.  But lately there hasn’t been a good year.

KHALED RAHAYLA: There is a scarcity of water, there was not enough rain this year and our crops were destroyed.

GRADSTEIN: Rahayla says he tries to collect rain water in the winter in shallow pools.  In the summer he goes to work in the nearby Jewish settlement to help make ends meet.  He has to buy drinking water from tanker trucks.  It is a similar tale of scarcity about 100 miles away, at the Sapir Pumping Station on the Sea of Galilee.  Huge peach colored pumps draw water from the sea, where it is then distributed throughout the country.

AMBI OF PUMPING STATION: Here we stand near the boats port which is dry now, totally dry  because the water level is 4 meters below what it used to be a few years ago.

GRADSTEIN: Doron Markel of the Israeli Water Authority says the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel’s largest freshwater lake and the source of more than a third of its drinking water, is fast approaching what is called the “black line.”  Once that happens, all pumping will have to stop or the Sea itself could be damaged.

The Middle East has had several years of drought.  Last year was the driest in Israel in 70 years.   This was a little better, with most areas getting about 80 percent of the average rainfall.  Scientists here say rain patterns are changing.  It’s raining less often, but more heavily.  That means less water is absorbed into the ground and that instead, the intense rains can cause floods.  According to Israel’s meteorological service, average temperatures in the Middle East have also risen significantly in recent years, which means more evaporation. Daniel Pedersen, a lecturer in environmental studies at Hadassah College in Jerusalem, says water stress is growing throughout the region.

DANIEL PEDERSEN: We’re now in the third or fourth year of lower than average rain, a drought year.  And across the region in Lebanon, in Israel, in the Palestinian Authority, in Jordan, in Iraq there is more use of water and less water available so there’s a crisis of water across the region.

GRADSTEIN: If the pattern sounds familiar, Pedersen lays much of the blame for the problems in a familiar place as well, climate change.  And the heightened water stress is exacerbating long-time problems and tensions.  Dr. Shaddad al-Attili, the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, says like everything else here, water is political.  Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has taken control of all of the territory’s water.  Palestinians are not allowed to tap the aquifer that runs under the West Bank without Israeli permission.

DR. SHADDAD AL ATTILI: I have water underneath our feet here but we’re not allowed to drill a well.  Because Israel, they took the water.  They don’t have the right policy, we’re living with the consequences of the Israel policy.

GRADSTEIN: In 1995, as part of the Oslo accords, Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed a deal on water sharing.  Since then, the Palestinian population in the West Bank has grown by tens of thousands. And the freeze in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations means the water agreement has not been updated.  Attili says the problem is growing more acute.

ATTILLI: The problem is not only here in the West Bank, it’s also in the Gaza Strip.  The water available to them is not enough.  And the quality of that water is not acceptable for human drinking.

GRADSTEIN: A recent report by the World Bank sharply criticized Israel, saying Israelis use four times as much water per capita as the Palestinians. The report also criticizes the Palestinian Authority for mismanagement and says Palestinian pollution threatens local water supplies.

Both sides take issue with the parts of the World Bank report, and they disagree on some of the causes of the crisis.  But Israelis and Palestinians do agree that it must be addressed. For its part, Israel recently cut water quotas to farmers by almost a quarter. There is also a new ban on watering private lawns. And consumers who use more water than the average will be charged a hefty premium. But Israel’s further options are somewhat limited, in part because the country already uses water very efficiently.  The country pioneered water-saving drip irrigation.  And Doron Markel, of the Israel Water Authority, says they’re already reusing most of their wastewater for agriculture.

DON MARKEL: Israel is the most efficient country in the world regarding the water system.  The most efficient part is the use of sewage of retreated sewage.  We use more than 70 percent of the sewage.

GRADSTEIN: Palestinians do not have this option, partly because they don’t have the resources. Clive Lipchin is Director of Research at the Arava Institute, which encourages Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian environmental cooperation.

CLIVE LIPCHIN: Currently there is not one wastewater facility in the West Bank that is running as it should and there’s no facilities in Gaza at all.  And again, it’s not just the Palestinians problems, if we’re not treating sewage in the territories its polluting the aquifer that were using.

GRADSTEIN: Given the dearth of other options, Israeli is turning to desalination.  Two desalination plants already produce about five percent of the country’s needs. And officials hope to boost that to more than 20 percent by the end of next year.  There’s even an ambitious idea called the Red-Dead canal, which would move water from the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea, and then desalinate some of that. But not everyone thinks desalination is the way to go. Environmentalists protest that desalination burns dirty fossil fuels. It’s also relatively expensive. So some say one of the only options left is agriculture, which despite all of its efficiencies, still uses about half of Israel’s water. Environmental scientist Daniel Pedersen says that has to change.

PEDERSON: Why should we take our precious natural resource so people can grow flowers and ship them to Europe or grow oranges or grow cotton?  These are all water-intensive crops and we are not a water-rich country.  We can grow our own food but there’s no real reason why we can’t rethink this division of our resources.

GRADSTEIN: Back in the Jordan Valley, farmer Khaled Rahayla doesn’t know anything about desalination or a new canal. All he can do is hope that somehow, he and his family get more water.

Everyday his wife Taysira bakes 20 round loaves of pita bread. That, along with olive oil and vegetables is what they and their young children eat. They can’t afford, meat or dairy products, since they have little to sell from their farm.  If the current water crisis continues, Khaled says he might have to give up farming altogether. For the World, I’m Linda Gradstein in Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley.

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