Israel’s Water Issues

It shouldn’t shock us anymore that the U.S. media ignores oppressed populations when covering environmental issues, and today’s headlines follow this disturbing trend.
An article published today by the New York Times covers a pressing environmental issue:

Can Israel Find the Water It Needs? (via Morning Brief)

Basically, Israel has been in a drought for four years that has been accompanied by the growing demand for water that comes along with a burgeoning population. Even though Israel is a pioneer in irrigation and desert agriculture, its troubles are a alarming symptom of global warming effects on agriculture worldwide.

More importantly, and not focused on in the article, is under what terms Israel gets the freshwater that it uses, and what other populations (e.g. Palestinians, Syrians) are not getting their fair share of water. Both groups have had trouble getting Israel to stick to its water-sharing agreements. Along the Jordan river, Israel has siphoned more than its fair share of water.As far as the Palestinians go, their water rights were most recently agreed upon in an early 90s agreement referred to as Oslo II. The agreement was supposed to ensure “equitable utilization of joint water resources”:

But in reality, this never happened. Instead, according to B’Tselem, a Joint Water Committee (JWC) was established to approve every “new water and sewage project in the West Bank. The JWC is made up of an equal number of representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. All its decisions are made by consensus, and no mechanism is established to settle disputes where a consensus cannot be attained. This method of decision-making means that Israel is able to veto any request by the Palestinian representatives to drill a new well to obtain the additions stipulated in the agreement.” (from The Nation)

A multilateral commission was also set up at Oslo to deal with the continuing water issues. Unfortunately, its work has been unproductive.

I’m left shaking my head at another case of the disenfranchised being ignored, while the woes of the power majority gets top billing in the press.