A (not-so) Small  Matter of Water

by Aubrey Wulfsohn 

Israel is balanced on the razor’s edge of its water economy.

During a debate at Tel Aviv University’s Diplomatic Forum, when challenged on how, after disengagement from northern Samaria ( which overlies hydrologically crucial areas of the Mountain Aquifer), Israel would be able to continue to manage and preserve its national water system, Dov Weisglass, the then-Prime Minister Sharon’s crony and legal mouthpiece, admitted with some embarrassment that he didn’t really understand much about water problems.  In fact, this prime mover in Israel’s subsequent abandonment of a chunk of northern Samaria, did not know that the Mountain Aquifer, extending from the slopes of Mount Carmel to Beersheba, serves as the principle source of drinking water to the Dan region, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba. Not did he seem to care. “Maybe we’ll have to import bottles of water,” he quipped to an astonished audience.

Israel may need unlimited quantities of that beverage if the Olmert government’s  strategy of peace based on the evacuation of Samaria and its 100-plus Jewish communities ever gets off the drawing board.  Direct collection of rain flow is a relatively minor Israeli water source.  The bulk of the nation’s water is drawn from  the Coastal and Mountain Aquifers – two subterranean  water-bearing  geological formations, which because of their porous structure and location beneath solid rock, have the capability of not just absorbing water, but holding it in safe-keeping for extended periods of time.   .

They are nature’s own water storage tanks.  Their product is accessed by the sinking of wells – but unless the process is selectively and geologically controlled, the aquifers can become polluted, salinated  and ultimately destroyed.

Tragic Memorial

The Mediterranean Coastal Aquifer, with an estimated water potential of 250 million cubic meters a year, has already been seriously compromised. In abandoning Yamit, the beautiful Jewish Sinai settlement sacrificed at the altar of the 1979 Camp David “peace” pact with Egypt, Israel placed the vital tail of the Coastal Aquifer into Egyptian hands, thereby automatically reducing its water supply from that source. The remains of Yamit are a memorial to the first expulsion of Jews by Jews. Things have proceeded from bad to worse. Under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to share the Coastal Aquifer with the Palestinian Authority. The PA’s definition of sharing soon became painfully evident. No sooner was the IDF out of Gaza City, than wildcat boring into the aquifer began. In relatively short order, the PA drilled 500 new wells, creating what one geologist called “an egregious example” of saline pollution.  By 2003,  Ben Gurion University geochemist AvnerVengosh observed that  the Coastal Aquifer was “becoming contaminated with salts, nitrates and boron, with many wells already exceeding international health standards.”

Can Israel realistically expect a better performance from the “new” post-Arafat Palestinian Authority? Judging by its Gaza performance to date, the chances look pretty slim. Yedidya Atlas, a commentator for the Arutz-7 news network, notes that with Israel’s handover of Gaza City and environs to its “sole ruling authority” following Oslo, the PA “received total control of the Gaza  [portion of the] aquifer -- which at the time was still functioning and producing potable water. Within less than two years under Palestinian Arab management, the Gaza Aquifer was ruined, contaminated beyond repair.  If the PA is incapable of taking care of its own aquifer to supply water to its own residents,” Atlas avers, “how can Israel place its trust in the same Authority to care and conserve water sources that supply Israeli taps?”

The answer is obvious, as is the ultimate fate of the Mountain Aquifer if Israel is ever foolish enough to make Samaria and Judea, sources of much of the rest of its major underground stores of water, hostages to Palestinian fortune.  The Mountain Aquifer consists of three basins. Some 83 percent of the recharge areas for these basins are located in Samaria and Judea – portions of the Land of Israel that were destined to go on the chopping block once the Gaza Strip had been cleansed of Jews.  Israeli surrender of access to these basins by surrendering the land above them would be tantamount to national lunacy.

Golan Threat

No less, from a riparian perspective, would be the loss of the Golan Heights. The Sea of Galilee acts as a buffer for Israel’s open water channels. It is not only the conduit for much of Israel’s drinking, agricultural and irrigation water, it is also a supplementary water supplier to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.  Most of the Sea of Galilee’s water sources are located in the Golan Heights. It is no secret that Syria has set  repossession of the Golan as its price for peace with Israel. It is also no secret that there are elements within and without the Olmert government who seriously believe that price  worth paying.

“Can Israel afford to trust her most valuable and irreplaceable national resource in the hand of those who have had a long history of trying to destroy the Jewish State?” Israel’s State Comptroller asked back in 1990. “In the case of the Syrians, this includes diverting and/or poisoning Israel’s water supply.” The question remains as valid today as it was 16 years ago.  The answer was provided 24 years before that when the Israeli Air Force had to destroy a Syrian attempt to divert the natural  flow  of the Yarmouk River headwaters into Israel, a diversion that would have reduced the nation’s water supply by 35 percent. In 1969, three years later, the IAF put an end to another Syrian diversion scheme at the East Ghor Canal.

Even if water were not at issue, concern for the environment would mitigate against permitting the Syrians anywhere near the Israeli Golan. In a January 2000 article, “Water, the Golan and the Sea of Galilee,” Michelle Stirling-Anosh reported that “After the Six-Day War in 1967 when Israel took possession of the Golan Heights, it found the land, water resources and wildlife to be undeveloped and unprotected.  Though there had been some Syrian settlements, land cultivation was manual, done on small plots of land. There was no sewer infrastructure.  Much of the territory had been mined.  All of the wild deer had been hunted to extinction.  Many other wild species had been hopelessly depleted.”

Following Israel’s capture of the Golan Heights, the danger to the 30 percent of the nation’s water supply sourced in the Golan  and the 50 percent derived from the Yarmouk and Banias Rivers (headwatered in Syria) were lessened. But the threat remains, as it does from Lebanese interference with Israel’s water supply, including its pollution of water flowing toward the Sea of Galilee with untreated sewage. In all, devastating political decisions like Oslo, the evacuation of Gush Katif, the threatened evacuation of Judea and Samaria with its loss of control over the Mountain Aquifer and the unthinkable  handover of the Golan Heights to Syria cast a giant shadow over 80 percent of Israel’s water supply. While that might not disturb Mr. Weisglass, it should keep the rest of Israel awake nights.

*Excerpted and edited from a paper by Aubrey Wulfsohn  of the Warwick Mathematics Institute, Coventry, England.