THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY 2003



SHARON’S ISRAELI FINANCE BILL:

Almost one billion NIS will be cut from children's allowances. The allowance will be even lower for Arab children and will be reduced for each additional child. Sharon's plan to deal with the mass unemployment is based upon the Wisconsin Plan: a system of workfare pioneered in the United States which will "encourage people to work and not to get money from the state", as senior government's officials said. More than 200,000 people in Israel have no job, and only some of them can get a monthly income from the state, which is less than the minimum salary.

Sharon's plan will make the conditions for receiving unemployment benefits more restrictive. Today, one must have worked six months in order to get six months of benefits from the state after having been fired. The new plan wants to increase the number of months that a worker needs to have been in permanent employment from six to 12.

In addition, many benefits granted to the most deprived layers will be reduced. For example, single-parent families will receive a maximum of $US127 housing benefit, instead of the present $US248 per month.

Only Israeli citizens who serve in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) will get full state benefits, a proviso that will hit Arab families (Israel doesn't allow Palestinian Arabs to serve as IDF soldiers) and the Jewish Orthodox community, which is exempt from military service. Both these groups are amongst the poorest in Israel, and Shas and United Torah Judaism have both posed as defenders of the poor in order to safeguard their religious-based constituency.


IS THIS A MAP THAT SHARON LOOKS AT EVERY DAY WITH GREEDY EYES ??

WATER: Continuous seizure or destruction of Wells or Water-pipes...WestBank and Gaza:..
Sharon’s government will take 30 wells in the Qalqilia district, seizing water resources already unequally allocated by the Israeli government at the 1967 level. A huge aquafer, the Western Groundwater Basin, lies under Palestine, yet Palestine remains water poor due to Israeli restrictions, a seldom mentioned but primary reason for Israel’s keen interest in the West Bank


Water Wars:  ISM Activists in Gaza Strip Gather To Protect Water Wells and Supply in Rafah......31. january.2003

Last night Israeli forces attacked Rafah's water supply at Tel el-Sultan destroying with bulldozers the 2 largest of six wells that supply the town's water.  This has resulted in a reduction of 50% in the town's water supply.

 
Tonight 4 ISM activists (2 Americans,, 1 Briton and 1 Swede) will stand guard around the 4 remaining wells protecting them with their bodies at the request of the Rafah's Water Municipality Director.  The well's are in a very exposed position - less than a kilometre from the Gush Katif Settlement, where the occupying army bases a large portion of its armoured and demolition vehicles.

This action follows a successful action undertaken yesterday when ISM intervention made possible the repair of a burst water main in Rafah which had been damaged by Israeli military activity and had been flooding a street of Rafah's Brazil area on the Egyptian border for more than six weeks.  On previous occasions municipal workers had come under machine-gun fire from a nearby Israeli tank whenever they tried to repair the damaged pipes. 

 Yesterday the workers were able to complete the repairs on the pipes without interference while ISM activists stood among them and between them and the tank.

 Should tonight's action be successful the activists intend to guard municipal workers installing a pump in a waterworks building, which they have been prevented from doing due to machine-gun fire from a nearby tank at Gush Katif Settlement which overlooks the building
UPDATE: 5th Feb.2003
Water Wars
  Today six ISM activists based in Rafah (3 American, 2 British, 1 Swedish) are accompanying municipal workers who are rebuilding a road to Rafah's main water pumping station northwest of Tel el-Sultan.  The road has been destroyed by the Israeli Army and both the road and the pumping station are overlooked by the Rafih Yem Settlement.  Repairs on the road have been prevented from machine-gun fire from an Israeli tank situated within the settlement.  (Last night a 12 year old boy was shot in the leg by machine-gun fire from the same tank.)   The activists have used a megaphone to inform the tank crew that they are international volunteers and are riding with the bulldozer crews of the municipal council who are repairing the road.  Tonight they intend to sleep at the water pumping station and tomorrow they intend to accompany municipal workers responsible for installing the new equipment in the station.   This action follows on two other successful actions carried out last week when the Rafah ISM activists acted as human shields by standing in between an Israeli tank and municipal workers fixing a ruptured water main that had been flooding a street in Rafah's Brazil area (the municipal workers had not been able to repair the pipe due to machine-gun fire from the tank) and when they slept at the Tel el-Sultan wells preventing their demolition (two of the wells had been destroyed by Israeli Army bulldozers on the previous night cutting Rafah's supply water by half).  

LEBANON: A delegation of American water experts yesterday toured the Wazzani River in Southern Lebanon to review projects initiated by the Lebanese government to direct some of its water to nearby villages. January 2003

The U.S. embassy in Beirut released a statement saying Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the experts' visit and the U.S. attempt to resolve differences in the water dispute. Lebanese officials, however, insisted that the U.S. delegation is not mediating between their country and Israel.

Lebanon characterized the American activity as being "technical," and "unofficial." An official Lebanese source said "if there is conflict, it must be resolved in the United Nations framework in accord with international agreements." Lebanon President Emile Lahoud released a statement yesterday saying that ""Lebanon has been deprived of profiting from its share of the Wazzani spring for many years because of the Israeli occupation."

Lahoud told a French Senate delegation yesterday that "Lebanon's decision to benefit from the Wazzani River's waters to irrigate its parched land and villages in the south is final and irreversible ... The Israeli threats will not keep international agreements and documents from being implemented."

Hashem Haidar, a senior official from the Council of the South, which is responsible for the water project at the Wazzani, said yesterday: "We are not changing the water bed of the river as Israel is saying, and ... we are taking less than our share of the water to the villages." "This is Lebanese water and Lebanese land. Lebanon has the right to give this water to those citizens who need water to drink," added Hussein Ahmad, head of the Wazzani municipality.

Lebanese newspapers reported yesterday that the Council of the South intends to finish the water project at the Wazzanni within three weeks.

The U.S. delegation featured an official from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a State Department official who specializes in water issues in the Middle East. The American officials photographed the project at the Wazzani, and also an Israeli pump near the divided town of Ghajar.

An official at the U.S. embassy in Beirut told Reuters: "American technical experts will be arriving over the coming weeks to take a look at water issues and to work with the Lebanese government to increase understanding about the nature of the project."

At this point, the Bush administration intends to let technical experts from the State Department address the water situation in Lebanon, U.S. officials said in Washington. The sources said yesterday that high level officials in the U.S. capital are monitoring the situation. U.S. representatives at the Wazzani are not there to judge the legitimacy of conflicting Israeli and Lebanese claims, the sources in Washington explained. Instead, the officials are there to listen to both governments present facts and claims, and to relay a message designed to allay tensions - the U.S. officials will urge both sides to resolve the issue via discussion and negotiation.

According to an Israel Defense Ministry spokesperson, the ministry's water adviser Noah Kinarti had joined Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Washington "in order to make clear [to the United States] that Israel will not agree to the water being diverted."

Last week, the Bush administration asked Israel to moderate its tone on the water crisis after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Lebanon not to divert water from the springs, saying any attempt to do so could provoke a military response.

The water issue was raised by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in meetings Friday in Washington with Vice-President Richard Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Peres called the plan to divert water a "provocation that [is] in violation of agreements and international law."
Jan.20.2003 Ha'aretz



Spate of studies on water projects reflects Israel's appetite for every drop

WATER AND PEACE: WATER RESOURCES AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE PROCESS by Elisha Kally with Gideon Fishelson, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT 06881, US. 1993, pp.127. Hbk: US$47.95.

By Khalil Osman

The quest for water to satisfy the burgeoning needs of an ever-increasing number of Jewish settlers in arid Palestine is as old as zionism itself. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of political zionism, recognized the vital importance of water for the success of his colonialist project. As far back as 1902. he published a novel entitled Altneuland (Old-New Land) in which he proposed a number of ideas, some of which envisaged inter-basin transfers. mainly from Lebanon's rivers and the headwaters of the Jordan River, to augment the water resources of and to generate hydroelectric power for the future 'national Jewish homeland' in Palestine.

The acute awareness of the importance of water for the success of their colonialist project fostered a water-mania among the zionists which manifested itself in a spate of studies and master plans that aim at controlling almost every drop of water that flows in Palestine and some of its neighbouring countries. Schemes to establish a region-wide water management regime that predominantly reflects Israel's hegemonic concerns have continued to proliferate to the present day. Nestled in this tradition, the book under review proposes a master plan for solving the water shortage problem in the southern Levant region within the framework of a regional peace agreement.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, written by Gideon Fishelson, an Economics professor at Tel Aviv University, provides a brief historical overview 'of the development of water resources, particularly west of the Jordan, and the conflicts between Israel and its neighbouring countries as they relate to the issue of water' (p.3). This survey, which covers the period from the beginning of the British Mandate on Palestine to the present, suffers from excessive compression and lacks clarity of exposition.

Objectivity in presenting historical facts does not appear to be a major concern of the author.Rather, his doctrinaire bias clouds much of the historical account. For example, he is at pains to exonerate Israel of responsibility for foiling past water development projects in neighbouring Arab countries and pinning blame squarely on the Arabs themselves. This is evident in his sketchy account of the failure of the Syrian and Jordanian governments to carry out the building of the joint Maqarin Dam on the Yarmuk. Fishelson argues that the project has been blocked by the inability of both governments to arrive at a water-sharing agreement. It is true that disagreement over water sharing has marred relations between Syria and Jordan from time to time: however, the author's account glosses over the fact that it was Israeli veto that has frustrated these countries' efforts to secure the needed international funding for the project.

Parts II and III, written by Elisha Kally, former head of the long-range planning group of TAHAL, Israel's water planning agency, constitute the major and noteworthy segment of the book. Part II consists in a regional hydrological investigation. It surveys the region's available surface and subterranean water resources, examines national water development policies in the respective countries. explores their major water problems. and provides some projections of their future water demand. The author alludes to a host of factors that contribute to the emergence of a water crisis in the region. These include population growth, expansion of industry and agriculture, increased urbanization and inefficient maintenance of water facilities as well as wasterful irrigation techniques.

Part III, which is the more interesting part of the book, is devoted to presenting Kally's manifold.master plan that envisions the importation of substantial amounts of water to supplement the declining regional resources - primarily those of Israel, and secondarily those of Jordan as well as the West Bank and Ghazzah Strip.

The major component project of the plan comprises the diversion of one percent of the Nile water eastward 'to the Gaza Strip, to Israel's Negev and, under certain conditions, to the West Bank and Jordan as well' (p.66). Kally argues that the project would also be facilitated by current 'Egyptian plans to transport water to the Sinai Desert and to construct irrigation projects there ... The joint Israel-Egyptian project under discussion could thus comprise an expansion and extension of the Egyptian enterprise' (p.67).

Supplying Nile water to the Negev desert would relieve Israel of the exorbitant costs incurred by the present system of supply from the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias or Kinneret). In exchange, water that used to be pumped to the Negev from the Sea of Galilee could be conveyed to the West Bank, and possibly to Jordan.

Another component project of Kally's master plan is based on storing the winter floods of the Yarmuk River in the Sea of Galilee. Kally maintains that this project 'will make from 100 to 240 million cubic meters of water that is currently running to waste available for use to Jordan and Israel' (p.83). Since the salinity of the Sea of Galilee, which is fed by a number of saline springs, is high, the conveyance of the Yarmuk water could reduce its salinity by 20 percent. That will make Israel the main beneficiary of the project as the Sea of Galilee serves as its main aboveground water reservoir.

Kally's master plan also envisages conveying water from the Red Sea to offset the progressive diminution of the water level in the Dead See which results from the utilization of substanital amounts of water from the Jordan River and its tributaries. The Red Sea-Dead Sea canal project would include an intake installation and a reservoir on the Red Sea, an open canal, and 'two power stations, one in Jordanian territory east of Beer Ora and one in Israeli territory north of Neot Hakikar' (p.93) which uses differences in elevation to generate hydroelectric power.

The last major component project is that of conveying Lebanese water to Israel. In this context, water from the Litani River would be diverted via a tunnel to either one of two Jordan River tributaries which rise in Lebanon, the Hasbani or the Ayoun. The diverted Litani water, which is characterized by an exceptionally low salinity level (less than 20 mg/l), would then be stored in the Sea of Galilee thus contributing to reducing its salinity. Moreover. Kally estimates that his proposed diversion of Litani water would make possible the production of a total about 70 million kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Overall, none of the projects proposed or discussed by Kally is new or original . Many variations of these projects have been proposed by others in the past. For instance. the idea of diverting Nile water to facilitate the settlement of Jews in the area was first considered by Herzl at the turn of the century. In the mid-1940s, the World Zionist Organization assembled a team of researchers and experts to prepare a comprehensive study that would serve as the basis of a water network in the future Jewish state. J B Hayes, an American engineerwho headed the team, published an all-inclusive plan that envisioned major transfers from the Yarmuk, the principal tributary to the Jordan River, and the Litani, the largest Lebanese river, to maximize the area of culivated land in Palestine.

The significance of Kally's plan, however, lies in his ability to synthesize these divergent schemes into an integral whole. Nevertheless, the welter of projects, alternative projects, technical details and future projections advanced by Kally fly in the face of fundamental international legal principles regulating the utilization of transboundary and international water resources. In addition, it is premised on a plethora of flawed estimates of the available resources and future needs of regional countries that would render his master plan an exercise in futulity.

For instance, Kally's total exclusion of Syria from his plan is rather perplexing, especially in light of the claptrap about 'peace' in the region that peppers the pages of the book. Since some of Jordan River's tributaries rise and flow in Syrian territories, Syria enjoys all riparian rights in line with such provisions of international law as those included in the Helsinki Rules for the Use of International Rivers.

Kally's plan, moreover, is based on erroneous assumptions regarding the availability of water surpluses in Egypt and Lebanon. The fact that water resources in Lebanon have not yet been fully or efficiently utilized is a consequence of the negligence and dereliction of duty on the part of consecutive Lebanese governments rather than being an indicator of a real low water demand in the country. Estimates by Lebanese hydrologists and the country's Ministry of Water and Hydroelectric Resources indicate that by the year 20l5 the country's water demand will approach its total available resources.

Likewise, contrary to Kally's claims, Egypt is not a water-rich country. It is estimated that Egyptian utilization of the Nile water will reach capacity use by the year 2,000. By the year 2025, water deficit in Egypt is expected to reach about 29 billion cubic metres per year. The realization of the impending water crisis in the countly has led the Egyptian government to embark on a number of projects that utilize non-conventional water techniques, such as desalination or sewage treatment, to enhance the country's water balance.

Moreover, the Nile River is shared by nine African States some of which have so far achieved abysmal levels of economic development. These countries will inevitably increase pressure on the Nile waters as they begin to undergo economic rejuvenation and to carry out agricultural expansion plans. In addition to infringing on the rights of the river's ripal-ians, the diversion of Nile water to a non-riparian could establish the latter' s de facto right to to the river's water under international law. Kally himself is fully aware of such an eventuality when he scoffs at demands placed on Israel to cease its ongoing theft of the water resources of Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Ghazzah Strip as being 'at odds with international law, which recognizes existing rights as holding precedence over future claimed rights' (p.58).

Khalil OsmanŠ 1997